Remains
by Getti
Summary: One steady leak of putrid water brings something unearthly into Sora's home, and a missing boy called Riku keeps appearing in his mirror begging to be saved...RikuxSora, LeonxCloudxLeon
1. It's Alright to Scream

Remains

AN: Hullo, I'll be your author for this fic. Exits are the back button, the home button, the login button, and pretty much every button except next chapter. Lifejackets are under your seats, and a hostess will be coming around with refreshments for you shortly. I hope you enjoy your stay with 'Remains'.

Disclaimer: Characters belong to someone who isn't me. Story is based on Japanese folklore, but bits have been changed to fit with characters and some stuff that I just plain wanted to write. XD

Warning: Shonen-ai RIKUxSORA. Some gore, no graphic sex, lots of ghosts. Beware; I know little to nothing about things paranormal, so if you know that certain ghosts are on their lunch breaks at 12:15pm and I have the Headless Horseman rampaging at that time, then I'm sorry and I'd love to know what you do about the subject. Please tell me in a review or note or whatever, it's always fun. By the way, the headless horseman is NOT in this fic, just to clarify. XD Thank you for reading!

**Remains**

Prologue – It's Alright to Scream

_One__…_

_She fled through the screen door and onto the outside deck._

…_Two__…_

_The plates still inside the room seemed to glow like smug eyes when she looked back, white surfaces spiralling with painted details sinister in their design._

…_Three__…_

_He grinned as she ran, taking the wooden sword from beside the door and starting after her… knowing he would win._

…_Four__…_

_He caught her by the hair, savagely pulling. Dragging her hair, her clothes, her head back. __Her kimono ripped._

…_Five…_

_The blindfold was on in an instant, and he hauled her, screaming, to the yard._

…_Six…_

_The chords broke the skin on her pale wrists as she writhed. Every stroke with the wooden sword bruised her body, suspended above eternity._

…_Seven…_

_Suspended above Hell. And then it was down into dark, into wet, into a place where she couldn't breathe or see or even feel her heart beat._

…_Eight…_

_And then she was pulled back into blessed, sweet air, but her heart didn't beat at all. _

…_Nine…_

_Blood mixed with water and she hated him, hated him…_

…

Somewhere a tap was dripping.

It wasn't something that would usually bother Sora, but today was not a good day, and his patience was wearing thin.

It was meant to be a good day, specially chosen because of the nice weather and the pale cherry blossoms. A day where children would play and laugh when he'd blush bright red and stammer a confession, and then Kairi would…

Kairi would…

Reject him completely. And why not? There she'd stood, in the sun which made her red hair look like fire. Her tanned face had dimpled when she'd told him not to be so silly. Perfectly manicured nails had skimmed his cheek when she'd told him he would always and could only be her friend. Dazzling eyes had sparkled at him as she laughed it off, walked towards the ice cream shop and told him to hurry up and stop hovering.

Like some sort of bug.

He knew she didn't mean to be callous, but he also knew she wasn't attracted to him in the slightest. Gangly Sora with freckles and soft brown hair that flew everywhere, and eyes blue enough to make you shiver.

The bathroom light flickered as he turned it on, but the tap wasn't dripping like he'd expected. The shower was bone dry as well, but the infernal pattern of water drops continued. Drip-drop-drip…

"Darn it…" He mumbled, turning on the tap and cupping his hands to catch the falling water. The cold sting on his face woke him a little, and he realised he couldn't just mope about Kairi all day. If she didn't like him, then she didn't like him, and nothing was going to change that. It wouldn't stop him from feeling down about it, but she didn't deserve him making her guilty over it either.

Something tangled round his fingers, and he shook his face free of water to open his eyes. Around each slender digit was twined knots of dark, matted hair, clinging to his hands like someone was tying it there. He shook it off into the sink with a grimace, brushing at it when it stuck. It clung still, and he picked up the scrubbing brush disgustedly to get the offending cuticles off. The tap choked as he worked, spurting out hair and water and turning his sink a muddy grey. His heart began to beat faster, breaths coming quicker at the lump in his throat. Sora berated himself for panicking over some hair, but it just wouldn't leave his skin. It fell off in clumps but still managed to coat his hands like long threads of silk. Were they…_no_, they couldn't be tying themselves together…

Feeling terror rise up, he tore at the mass and flung it at the sink. Finally he collapsed on the toilet seat across the room breathing hard, feeling relieved his hands were finally smooth again.

"Woah…" He breathed. "It's okay, just, just phone a plumber or something. Use some bleach and flush it out of the drain. I'll bet someone's bath water has been getting into the water tank…Ew…" He pulled himself up off the seat and back out into the corridor, leaving the water running to clear.

Wiping his hands on his jeans, Sora picked up the grubby, school-bus yellow phone and pulled out the phone book. There was only one plumber that operated on Sundays, written in plain font at the bottom of the page. The short, to the point advertisement didn't use the pictures and catchphrases of the rest, and in fact looked more of an obituary than an advert. Still, his sink _was_ upchucking hair, so Sora resignedly phoned the number.

It rang for what seemed like forever. Bored of waiting, Sora took the phone to the kitchen sink and reached underneath for the gloves he used for cleaning. Slipping them on, he returned to the bathroom. The phone was still ringing as he opened the door.

"Aw, shit." He cursed. The tap had cleared, but the hair coating the sink had stopped the water from fleeing down the drain. It streamed down the outside of the sink's bowl, flooding the floor and sloshing over his bare feet. It was deathly cold, and he could already feel his feet turning blue.

"Highwind Plumbing, Cid Highwind 'ere. What d'ya want?" Sora jumped at the tinny voice in his ear, amazed someone had picked up.

"Um, hi, my name is Sora. I've got a problem with my sink…" Taking a deep breath, he plunged the glove-covered hand into the hair and pulled out a handful, dropping it like slop into the bathroom bin. Sora made a face and picked out the next handful.

"Yeah, and?"

"Well you're a plumber, right?"

"Last time I checked." Sora turned off the tap when it seemed the water was hair-free and managing to squeeze itself down the drain. With only a few more disgusting handfuls, his sink would be hairless again.

"Look, could you come out to Dresdon Avenue? I think there's something in the sceptic tank of the apartment block. A load of hair and dirt just came out of my tap and it's probably affecting everyone…actually I'll go ask, ugh this stuff's like stringy treacle."

"Hold on kid. My young'un has pneumonia, I can't come out today. Give us tomorrow morning and I'll be round by lunch latest." Sora inwardly fumed. What was he supposed to do with a bathroom like the Amazon in monsoon season? Only he would be so lucky as to have an all out flood on the one day that plumbers in the area decided to take a collective day off.

"Thanks, you're a life saver." He said grimly, shovelling another handful. He'd have to just wait it out, and tell the people downstairs not to worry if their ceiling started sweating. "I'll see you when-" At the sight of a wide eyeball glaring at him from the barely visible drain he yelled and dropped the phone into the deepening puddle on the floor. When he looked back, the sink was empty and his phone was bubbling in the water. He bent down to reach it, grumbling about having dropped the last handful of hair. As he lifted it freezing cold hands wrapped around his ankles to the sound of the dial tone.

He shrieked and whirled. Hair tangled round his ankles that were numb and wrinkled, toes on his feet turning mottled blue. Despite the likelihood of the hair having played tricks on his numbing feet, Sora left his task unfinished and left the bathroom with haste and irrational fears.

Big, black work shoes made him feel safer. The next thing to attach itself to his legs would get a good, solid kick in the jaw…even if it was only hair. Besides, he told himself, he wasn't wearing them to scare off water spirits or whatever, it was because he couldn't walk down the stairs in bare feet. There could be syringes or anything on that stairwell…

Making sure the latch was down on his door, he started down the run-down corridor, almost relieved to leave his shabby apartment. In one corner there was a damp patch that had started to grow mould. The wallpaper there was peeling and the colour had bled down the wall. Someone had abandoned a pram and a broken umbrella on the threadbare carpet, but otherwise the corridor was empty and silent bar his own raking breaths. Feeling eyes on him, Sora sped up and exploded through the swinging doors into the stairwell. Behind him in the corridor was nothing. The feeling was still there though; prickling up his spine and making his mouth dry. He shuffled down the stairs quickly, leapt the last three and marched down the ground floor corridor to warn the Hendersons, hoping that a little human contact would scare away the incessant paranoia that was gnawing at his mind.

"Mister Henderson?" He called, knocking for a second time. Behind him the mirror-lined wall reflected him, bent and malformed from years of abuse. When no-one came to the door, Sora opened the letter box to try again. "Mister Henderson, the water's gone…Oh, hello sir."

Mr Henderson was a very tall, imposing man. Standing in his doorway, Sora couldn't see much past him in his bathrobe, but he knew that the meek Mrs Henderson would be on the sofa behind him.

"How can I help you, Master Strife?"

"Uhm, well there must be something wrong with the water tank because my sink is clogged up with all sorts of things. I've called a plumber and he's coming tomorrow, but I thought you should know. Oh, and it flooded my bathroom so, uh, if you see water dripping through the ceiling…" Sora felt a cold breath wash the back of his neck, and turned around. At that moment the pipes lining the wall opposite started to clank and groan.

"Strange things, hm? I hope your bathroom isn't damaged too much. If you need any help with repairs at all, I'm always available for painting and things."

"Thanks a bunch Mister Henderson, that means a lot. I'll leave you and your wife in peace now."

"Well thank you for letting us know, Sora." Sora flashed him his trademark grin and the man's expression softened.

"No problem. Goodnight Mister Henderson."

"Goodnight." The door began to close and, feeling much calmer and a little embarrassed at having got so emotional earlier, Sora turned to leave. There was a rumble from the pipes as he passed, but he ignored them and began to hum as he tackled the stairs once more.

X

Sora woke up in a dream. Around him was only air, but he felt like he was floating in the darkness, and currents pulled at his pyjamas and hair. Experimentally he took a breath, but found that he could breathe just fine. Kicking out with one leg, his body glided upwards a little. He grinned.

Summersaults were easy in the almost-weightlessness; he could twist and glide like he was flying. All the while he glowed like a night-light, an inner light that kept the darkness warm and fuzzy.

It was inevitable that that light went out.

Frozen arms, whiter than white, wrapped around his slender middle and the light was extinguished, pulling him downward. His shirt felt wet under the unwanted embrace, and although he wanted to scream he couldn't. The darkness became oppressive and water cascaded down his back before any sound was made.

"Please. I need your help." A voice gasped by his ear. It began to breathe heavily, and Sora's heart flipped. He ripped the arms off him, but felt something latch onto his wrist.

"I want to save you. I need your help." The creature pulling him was soaked to the bone, silver hair plastered to a pale face. Clothes were plastered to a defined chest that heaved and he couldn't see the eyes, hidden as they were by a blood blotted blindfold that seemed to be tied tight enough to leave huge red welts in the dead skin beneath. The figure opened his mouth, and water swept down his chin. "I'm trying to-" He gagged. "I'm trying to save you, _help me._"

"One…" An unknown voice called from the darkness and Sora's hand was released. He pulled it back to his body with a sharp sob, and looked around for the other voice.

"Two…" It continued. Looking back at the thing that had grabbed him, he saw hair, the very same hair that had crept out of his tap, begin to slink from under the blindfold. The figure panicked and began to tug and rip at it.

"Three…" The watery mouth opened again in a haunting scream, and was only silenced when the entire body had been consumed.

"Four…"

_Drip._

AN: I've never written horror before. Gosh it would be so much more dramatic if I had visual stuff to play with instead of words…It's so hard to get the sudden terror across when writing. XD Anyway, thanks for reading! I shall start to explain Riku's story next chapter, and do tell if you have any knowledge in writing horror, it's a learning curve for me.


	2. I'm Screaming Too

AN: Ho ho ho, merry Easter

AN: Ho ho ho, merry Easter. Hope you had happy bunny attacks. And I warn thee, this quick update is VERY odd for me. It's usually a week or more before new chapters arrive, I'm just spoiling you because I'm on holiday. XD And yes, there is some SoraxKairi, as much as I hate it; it's crucial to the plot. Oh dear, what possessed me to think that up?

Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Inspiration taken from J Horror, and the Japanese ghost legend 'Okiku'.

Thank you to Isler for being the first reviewer, and Cycoranne for making me laugh. C: Happy me.

**Remains**

Chapter Two – I'm Screaming Too

Sora woke in a cold sweat. Wiping a hand down his eerily wet face to clear the nightmarish fog, he shuddered. He wanted to be bone dry in a desert heat to combat the memories of that…whatever it was.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and looked around; nothing was different. His room was exactly the same, with bad carpet and the shoes he'd worn last night on the floor. Nothing.

The house phone was still on the table beside his bed, and he picked it up and hit the number on speed-dial. As it rang he bi-passed the bathroom with the giant puddle that had refused to drain away, instead going to the kitchen sink. A new toothbrush would have to be found, and some toothpaste excavated from the unpacked bags of last month's holiday, all because he didn't want to go back into the bathroom.

"Heya, this is Kairi, what's up?"

"Kai? It's Sora."

"Oh…" And awkward silence followed, before he could almost see the smile she forced onto her face. "Hey Sora. Why are you calling?"

"It's just, there's some weird stuff happening at my flat…Look, I'll tell you about it later. Are you free?"

"Uh, yeah sure. Where do you want to go? And what weird stuff?" Sora sighed and switched on the kitchen tap, glaring at the circling birds outside above the grey streets.

"It's probably nothing, I'll explain when we get there. Lets meet at the gypsy market."

"So-o-ora, I wanna know what weird stuff is happening!"

"I can't explain now Kairi, you know I don't have enough money to pay for long phone conversations…"

"Oooh! You want a long conversation? Sounds interesting. I'm setting off _now_ just because I want to know. I'll be there in half an hour! And I expect some good gossip for getting me out of the house so early, too." The window ahead of him began to fog up from the condensation, and Sora drew a smiley face in it with one finger, smiling to himself. It seemed that Kairi was at least willing to still be friends. He was glad he hadn't lost that.

"Yeah Kairi, see you in half an hour." Ending the call, he put down the phone and watched his smiley face get obliterated by drips of water. His brows drew together as he saw some misted writing next to it, uncovered only now that the condensation had settled on the glass. He turned up the hot tap in the hopes it would become clearer, the steam rising from

"You…" He read. "…Want her?" He shook his head, confused, and turned off the tap. "I must have been half asleep when I wrote that. Want what?" The mutters continued back to the bedroom where he grabbed the sheets to make the bed. Sora didn't notice the dark hand that wiped the words away, even from the other side of the glass.

As he lifted the sheet he heard a drip and looked up on impulse. Dark, festering mould had spread across his ceiling and was dripping onto the cover of his mattress, leaving a small puddle. Reaching out one hand, he pressed the sodden sheets and watched as water bubbled up from within them. The mattress groaned, unable to absorb any more of the liquid.

He jumped as he felt cold lap at his bare feet, vowing to wear slippers from then on. Below him the floor was being devoured by more creeping water, trickling down the wall behind him. One dirty stream poured down his faded wallpaper, leaving a stain and forcing the water on the floor to lap up more of his bedroom. More seemed to be leaking from under the wall itself. He knew it must be from the room just beyond his…

The bathroom.

A spray hit him as he left the bedroom. When he ducked out of its wrath, he saw that it came from a pipe snaking down his corridor, the pressure jetting it out and directly through his door. Now wet, cold and dirty, Sora was almost expecting the final wave of water that trickled at first, and then cascaded down his walls in sludgy ribbons of brown. It washed the pictures off his walls, letting them smash against the quickly flooding floor. In the middle of the dirty tropical storm invading his home, Sora really wanted to cry.

"Five…"

And then he wanted to scream. Forcing his head to turn, he slowly allowed the dark, open doorway to the bathroom into his vision. The black water on the floor rippled slightly as he approached. Finding the chord for the light switch he pulled it and found that it refused to scare away his fears with light.

"Six…"

Breath caught in his throat and he swallowed thickly, hand clenching almost painfully on the light chord. There, in the middle of the puddle, a dark lump…

"Seven…"

A human head. On his bathroom floor. A human head that was _looking at him._

"Oh, God…" Sora's vision started going hazy. His apartment was a bog, there was a head on his floor, and he was going to _faint._

And miss his time with Kairi.

"Eight…" The head spoke, sludgy bubbles rising to the top of the water from its submerged mouth. As his knees gave beneath him it moved, white face and wide eyes rising out of the deep. Long, half-unbound black hair still trailed on the surface from a head that at one point had been Japanese. Sora couldn't move, no matter how his brain screamed or his heart beat, his shaky arms had no strength to lift him. _You're going to die, without ever seeing Kairi again…_

"Nine…" _You'regoingtodie!_

"…" It pulled on its long hair, staring widely at nothing, mouth opening and closing as though it couldn't breathe. Behind it, the glass in front of the shower began to steam up and frantic scrawls began to appear on its surface; 'You want her, you want her, you'll hurt her, you'll kill her…'

The shower head turned and the metal cap flew off, cracking the frosted bathroom window. The figure rising from the floor looked up with a mixture of smug evil and abject terror on its face before pulling its limbs up from their broken position at its side, and lunging at him with a scream loud enough to snap his eardrums. From the empty shower head spewed a torrent of water powerful enough to knock Sora onto his back. Then he was there, the deathly white figure with the watery mouth. He blocked the spray and the terrifying view of the creature screaming behind him. Pale, slender fingers clutched Sora's upper arms and hauled him up. His face, sculpted from marble, came close to Sora and crystal lips whispered in his ear.

"Go. Now. I want to save you." Sora was turned and pushed into the torrent again, propelled towards his own front door. His hands were slippery as he fumbled with the latch, crying tears of frustration as his fingers slipped again and again. When he finally got the door open, he turned back to see the screaming thing crawling up the ethereal boy. As the cascade finally overtook them, Sora ran.

The mould on the corridor ceiling looked like an agonised face as Sora sped past it. The stairwell was soaking, puddles of water infecting his shoes on every step. He slipped when he got to the window, hauling himself back up and jumping when there was a thump on the glass. It was there, hair like a spider web across the glossy surface, steaming up the window so only its screaming face could be discerned through the glass. The last corridor was only a few steps away, and then the street with sunshine and people…

Pushing himself off again he burst through the doors and ignored the shrieks and the hair tumbling down from cracks in the wall. Beside him in the mirrors his reflection changed to that of the boy who'd saved him, running alongside him. There it was, the exit to his apartment complex. He hit the button to disable the locking system, and pushed. The lock gave a whirr and he moaned.

"No, not now, not now…" Sometimes the lock would need time to work itself out if it hadn't been used for a few hours. It clanked and beeped, and the figure in the mirror had stopped beside him. Water, dark and murky, was rising higher and higher but not coming through the mirror to Sora's world. White hands splayed across the glass.

"Don't forget me." It said. Down at the end of the corridor the lights flickered. "Please come back for me." The first bulb went out and the screaming figure dripped from the ceiling like oil. Sora banged on the door and hit the button again. The second bulb went out and it crawled closer. And then they were all flickering, blinking, and with every blink it scuttled closer at unnatural speeds. The door clicked, and Sora pulled. The sunshine bathed him and the wind stuck his wet clothes to his body. Through the blindfold the boy was still facing him.

"Please, come back, come back, _please…_" Blue arms and dark hair snaked around his mouth, silencing him. Sora felt sick to his stomach, but fear ordered him to leave. The sunshine was calling.

X

The gypsy market was thriving, heaving with people and voices. Collapsing on the stone fountain, Sora let the sun and warm rock beneath him evaporate any lingering terror until it was a distant fear. People stared at him, at his wide eyes and wet clothes, but none came to help.

"Sora?" He looked up, and she was there. Something inside him cried at the normalcy.

"Oh, God Kairi…" He jumped up and buried himself in her embrace. Ignoring the water dripping onto her, she gently hugged him back and cooed soothing words into his ear.

"It's alright, it's alright. Do you want to talk about it?" She asked, rubbing circles over his back. Sora took a deep breath and looked her in the eye.

"Only if you promise you'll believe me."

"Of course Sora. I'd believe you even if you said you'd been kidnapped by aliens, I don't think you've ever told a lie to me…"

"Actually Kairi, you're not far off." As Sora explained, Kairi watched him closely. There was certainly something there that hadn't been before. He was wary, paranoid even, searching the streets and faces that they passed.

"And that's when I saw the head." Her head snapped up and looked directly at him. He wasn't smiling.

"The…head?"

"Yeah."  
"So, there's a severed head just, um, _sitting_ on your flooded bathroom floor?" Sora shook his head and turned to watch a group of children rush past in a cloud of giggles and candy. The perfect porcelain skin below the sleeves of his jacket was marred with mottled blue bruises.

"No. The rest of it came out of the floor and at me. But the boy from my dream stopped her, it…um. He picked me up and threw me out of my own apartment." His voice lowered to a whisper. "And I left him there. With that thing." Kairi shook her head and gave him a reassuring hug.

"You had to Sora. From what I've heard, that ghost can take care of himself."  
"Ghost?" Sora looked shocked.  
"Well what else would he be? No normal person can appear in mirrors and dreams, or talk through a mouthful of water." Sora remained silent for a moment.

"He asked me to go back for him."

"Then we will."

"Kairi! Were you even listening? You're not going to that apartment. _I'm_ even debating going to that apartment…" Sora turned on her, bright blue eyes set determined. Kairi pouted.

"I'm not going to be scared off by some dodgy plumbing, honestly Sora. And what about the boy? You said yourself that he's alone with whatever malevolent spirit is in your bathtub." She insisted.

"Don't mock me Kairi. I'll go." Huffing, she crossed her arms. Kairi had always loved anything about magic or the supernatural. She'd been to every haunted shrine within a four hour trip, and had even become Wiccan at one point. This ghost was definitely something she had to see for herself. But…she loved Sora too and Sora came first. The boy was whiter than a sheet and still high on adrenalin. Her mothering side began to overwhelm her full force.

"You haven't heard the last of this Sora Strife. I've always been able to persuade you before. For now though, lets get some ice cream for your recovery time. You still look pale."

"Okay, sure." Sora shoved his hands into his pockets and began to walk.

"Oh, and Sora?"

"Hm?"

"You're not wearing any shoes."

X

After ice cream and Kairi's constant fussing, Sora could almost feel as though life had never changed. So he had a leaky tap. So what? And hair could come out of any tap if the tank or pipes got mixed up. Maybe the water pressure had just built up and burst the pipes. And messages in condensation could have been written by anyone…

But there was no way to explain away the shrieking figure of a drowned woman rising from his flooded bathroom floor, or a boy trapped in his mirror.

He sighed and shook his head. The double chocolate ice cream in his hand had started drooping dejectedly.

"Come on Sora, eat up. Don't go neglecting chocolate just because there was no sea salt, it'll get abandonment issues." Kairi joked. Sora gave a weak smile and bit into his ice cream. It tasted wonderful, as it would from the famous Xigbar's Ices. The truth was he just forgot about the treat in his hand.

He was too focussed on every silver head of hair or mop of rising black.

"Come on Sora, lets go. This place upsets me." Looking up at Kairi's words, Sora saw they were in the middle of the gypsy market again. Around them were people of all ages, some crying and others looking frantic. A man stopped him with a poster of a young girl.

"Have you seen this girl, Sir? She's my Miyuki, my little princess. She's only been gone two days, please have you seen her?" Sora shook his head with a mumbled 'sorry'. The fence on one side was wallpapered with sheets of white, pink, blue and yellow, each with a photocopied picture of a smiling face in the centre. Below them were phone numbers and names and parents and friends.

A sea of a thousand missing faces.

"Yeah, lets go." He began to push through the crowds, pulling Kairi behind. At a splash he looked down. Thin ribbons of water were at his feet, leaking from under the fence. Following them up over the pavement, around a payphone and beyond shoes and boots, he saw a pair of piercing pair of eyes he'd never seen before in his life.

But he knew the face.

"That's him!" He exclaimed, letting go of Kairi's hand and pushing forwards to the picture. It showed a young man smirking at someone else who was half cut out from the picture. He had long, light hair and a square jaw. His expression was…happy…

"What a shame, that one is _cute_." Kairi said, looking over his shoulder. "I never knew you went for the strong, lady-killer types So-ora."

"Kairi, that's him. That's the boy who's in my apartment." That silenced her. Sora turned back to the poster. "Riku Hikari. Age eighteen, green eyes…I've never seen his eyes…" Suddenly a rivulet of water wound through the posters and straight down the centre of the one they were studying. The ink blurred and ran, and photo-Riku's smile was drowned in ink and water. Sora rushed to pull the poster from the wall, ripping it in places but eventually managing to save the main article. The photo, however, was unrecognisable. Still, the information was there. Sora couldn't see a mister and missus Hikari anywhere, the only phone number was for someone called Leon Leonhart.

With Kairi watching, confused, Sora ran to the nearby service phone and punched in the number with a quick precision.

"Sora, what are you doing? You could really hurt those people if you bring him up! If he's a ghost he's dead, remember? Sora. Sora!"

"Hello?" A gruff voice answered.

"Mister Leonhart?"

"Hn."

"My name is Sora Strife. I…I may have some information about Riku." Sora heard a faint gasp but ploughed on. "Could you just answer me though, did Riku have a problem with his water supply, or uh, his bathroom at all?" There was a pregnant silence before Leon spoke.

"Where did you get this number?"

"O-on the poster you put up at the gypsy market…"

"How quickly can you get to the address on that poster?" Sora looked down. He knew the area it was in, and the route to get there.

"Fifteen to twenty minutes…"

"Will you come…" There was a pause and a deep breath as though the speaker was finding it hard to say. "…please?"

"Yeah sure." Sora ended the call without saying goodbye.

"Sora, what are you doing? Listen to me, you can't just barge into those people's lives!" Kairi berated.

"Riku barged into mine. I'm going to find out about him. He asked for my help, he asked me to go back for him, and I'll do that. But before then I'll find some way to stop whatever's going on." He reached into his pocket for some change. Finding a credit card he grinned grimly. "Come on, I'm going to buy some shoes and then we're catching a bus to Riku's place."

AN: It is SO hard to type Kairi's name quickly. I keep putting 'Kiara', annoying. And Sora's apartment's locking system is in my high school, most goddamn annoying thing ever, you have to get someone else to smack the button to get back in. :Pokes her school: Anyway, please leave a comment and thank you for reading at all!


	3. Why Do You Think

AN:

AN: I'm going on holiday next Monday, so unless the next chapter is up before then it will be late by two weeks. Sorry about that, but Getti needs a break XD

Cid's a little OOC. Sorry about that too, but I had too much fun writing about him that way. And EW GROSS LEON. Damnit. I can't write him. In fact, I'll re-write it sometime…

Disclaimer: Not mine, dealio.

**Remains**

Chapter 3 – Why Do You Think…

Kairi felt Sora get more and more tense as the bus rumbled along the small roads. His eyes were flickering every which way and he refused to sit on the seat. Clutching at one of the poles in the centre of the floor, he looked like a heron poised for flight. Kairi frowned.

Sora couldn't imagine what he was going to say to Leon Leonhart. But it wasn't bothering him too much, because he kept seeing _her_ everywhere. Her face was worn by people they passed on the street, or she'd be sitting in the car next to the bus, just looking at him from the window. The worst was when her reflection appeared in the windows, and she was never where she should be on the seat.

"Sora, calm down. You're going to wear a hole in the floor." Kairi murmured to him. Sora ignored her, after all, she wasn't the one being stalked. There were only two other people on the bus; an old lady with a battered shopping bag who looked like she'd fallen asleep, and a business man talking in hushed tones on his phone, glaring at the seat as if it were about to bite him. To avoid thinking about everything, Sora walked over the old lady under Kairi's watchful eye. He shook her shoulder.

"Excuse me Ma'am, the bus is stopping soon. I don't want you to miss your stop." The lady slowly opened her eyes, but remained staring at the floor. A rustling drew Sora's attention to her bag. Inside, something was moving, only visible by the few holes splattered across the plastic. As he watched, fingers came through one of the holes, stretching it to reveal an eye. It searched the bus for a moment, but the moment it settled on him the old lady snapped up and stared at him. Backing away, Sora walked, then ran and stumbled back to his place with Kairi.

"What was all that about Sora? That old woman is giving you the evil eye…" Looking back, he could see her staring at him over the back of her seat. He stiffened.

"Kairi, do you see?"

"See what; Wrinkly? I'll go give her a piece of my mind if you like."

"No. No, no beside her. It's her. She's here." Kairi looked again, but could see nothing. No, wait…She looked closer and there it was; a stain, a watermark slowly seeping through the putrid green of the seat next to the glaring woman. "Can you see her?"

"I…I see something but…Sora there's no-one there."

"She's there. She is. She's got both hands over the top of the seat to pull herself up. I can see half of her face, but the bottom half is hidden by the seat." Kairi looked again.

"Sora, I can't see her."

"Shit!" He pulled up his feet and shuffled back as far as he could in his seat.

"What? What is it?!" Kairi cried. Something was happening, something that terrified Sora -the happiest person she knew- and she couldn't see it which scared her senseless.

"Oh God…" Sora screwed his eyes shut and, not knowing what to do, Kairi wrapped him in a hug. Looking back down the aisle of the bus she saw nothing but water and mud from peoples' footprints. Only then did she wonder if they were the footprints of people at all. "Oh God, oh God…" Suddenly two wet handprints were slapped onto the seat right by Sora's feet, and then the bus braked heaving them all forward. Once she got her bearings, Kairi found herself being dragged from the coach by her hand. Sora was breathing heavily ahead of her and he seemed to know where he was heading.

"Sora…What, what happened?" She gasped.

"I think she was lost when the bus braked. She just sort of… turned into water and dropped to the floor. But I'm sure we haven't lost her, so keep going!" As it began to rain, Sora pumped his legs faster. He was not going to lose to her.

X

Cid rang the bell for the fifth time with a frown and a string of curses. He was sure it was this address that the kid had phoned from, so why wasn't anyone answering? Hearing a muffled click, he shrugged to himself and tried the door.

It opened easily and he huffed at himself, chewing on the toothpick he'd swapped with his regular cigarette. Damn these buildings and their no smoking policies…

He knocked on the first door and waited for a response grumpily. His daughter was still sniffling at home and he needed the money, but this apartment complex was damn cold an he didn't deserve this kind of shabby treatment, damnit!

"Can I help you?"

"Afternoon. I got a call 'bout some floodin' in a bathroom?"

"Ah. That would be Sora's apartment, he's right above us." The man smiled. "Apartment B19. But he went out a while ago, so here, take the key." He reached back into the door still smiling, and pulled out a small silver key on a practical key ring showing only Sora's address.

"Thanks." Cid grunted, turning towards the stairs. When he turned back, the man was still there, smiling.

X

Kairi tried to fix her aching wrist as Sora knocked on the door. She'd probably get bruises from this…Damn ghosts…

Sora's spikes were drooping in the rain, it was like he'd never got dry. Still he continued to boom, boom, boom pound on the door. It finally opened, the imposing outline of a tall man filling it.

"Are you Sora?"

"Yeah, and this is Kairi." Sora said, wheezing slightly. He didn't elaborate on Kairi's reasons for being there, and Leon Leonhart didn't seem to care. He nodded as a form of inviting them in, and walked off into the house leaving them to close the door on their own. They followed cautiously. "Mister Leonhart?"

"Leon."

"Uhm, Leon…about my question earlier…" Leon was wide at the chest, wearing a white tank top that showed off the muscles of his arms. His hair was a dark, chocolate brown that fell past his ears, and he had a few strands that brushed a long scar that slashed between his eyebrows and over his nose. All in all, this Leon looked nothing like Riku. Sora supposed they must have been friends, or lovers.

Leon ignored Sora's scrutiny of him and put some glasses in the cupboard, finishing whatever he'd been doing before they'd turned up on his doorstep. Sora noticed the tiles around the sink were cracked, broken or not there at all. Leon, however, didn't strike him as someone who would live in a shabby home, and indeed the rest of the house seemed clean and orderly. Almost freshly painted and decorated.

"Yeah. The plumbing was shot. It still is, I have to go next door to Aerith's to use her shower. Follow me." A little surprised by the curt tone and short sentences, Sora and Kairi could do little but follow the stoic man through the halls of the house.

They stopped at a room that was freezing thanks to the gaping hole that had once been a window. Grey light streamed through, glinting off the tape that had been stuck the remaining shards of glass embedded in the window pane. The glass around the square shower booth had cracks stemming from areas that looked like they'd been hit, and the base was a grimy brown colour.

"Woah, and Sora thought his bathroom was wrecked…" Kairi said. Sora bent down to look at the shower stall, rubbing his finger in the grime. It coated it, but still didn't show the gleaming white that should have been beneath. He noticed black hair in the drain.

"I've cleaned it so many times…It won't come off. Riku disappeared in here when he was showering, but the police say that's impossible."

"Why?" Sora asked, looking up. Leon stepped to the side and indicated under the sink. A dark, jagged hole ate the stonework of the wall, and behind it Sora could see pipes. They were bent and twisted every which way, sometimes tied in knots or wound around each other. "Geeze, what happened there?"

"We called in some plumbers to see why the water had stopped, and they had to break the wall to get to the pipes. That's how we found them, even though no human has the brute strength enough to bend pipes like that. That…That was when Riku was still alive." Leon took a deep breath. "I assume that's what you meant about a 'problem with the water supply'."

"Uh, not exactly, but it's sort of the same…"

"So this is happening to you too?"

"What?"

"The leaks and tap malfunctions, the floods and the…the visions." Sora frowned. It was pretty horrific to be called a vision, whatever it was that was stalking him. Still, he nodded. Leon seemed to reach a decision and turned to leave the room. Kairi and Sora looked at each other, confused. Kairi shrugged.

"You're the one who wanted to come. Go follow him!" She hustled Sora down the corridor behind the stoic man ahead, and they stopped at a room with a poster on the front of a band Sora had never heard of.

"That's Riku!" He exclaimed, pointing to a boy with a guitar. "He's in a band?" Leon smiled slightly, only a twitch of the lips.

"No. That's a fake poster some friends got for him. He always said he'd become famous one day…" His pushed the door, and inside the first thing they saw was an amplifier and a well cared-for guitar. Around the room were posters and sheets of music, a dresser with a broken mirror, a wardrobe with an open door showing the gutted insides. The clothes spilled out onto the floor.

One whole wall was photos. Picking the nearest one, Sora studied it. Riku and some friends seemed to be having a water fight, and it was eerily reminiscent of the drenched Riku he saw in his mirrors. Gleaming silver hair was wet, and his shirt sticking to his skin. And the colour of his eyes was unmistakeable; aqua green that could almost look right through you.

"You said you had some information. I've answered your questions; will you answer mine?" Sora turned to Leon and nodded solemnly.

"Yes. But you might not believe me…Then again, your bathroom is totally trashed. Riku…I know about Riku not just from the poster. I know him because I've seen him in my apartment. He's saved me from something that's ripping my building apart, and he's asked for my help."

"Where is he?" Leon had stiffened, stormy grey eyes sharp and gleaming with an inner hope. "Why didn't you bring him with you?" Sora shook his head.

"She got him. He was only ever there for a few seconds and then he'd disappear, or he'd take the place of my reflection in the mirror…"

"Don't you dare take the piss." Leon's face contorted into a furious snarl.

"No please, I have to know what happened to him, he asked for my-"

"Did you think this was _funny?_ What, you get your kicks from telling families of the deceased that their spirit says goodbye and all that crap? Get the fuck out!"

"Leon! I don't think Riku's dead!" Sora screamed back. Kairi, backed against a wall, gave Sora a shocked look. Sora never shouted. Sora never got angry. It somehow made everything so much more sickeningly real. The incensed man turned from him, suddenly silent, and punched the wall.

"Damnit!" He cried. Sora almost thought he saw the hint of a tear. "Damnit." Walking over, he put a hand on Leon's shoulder, despite how he felt himself shaking. "I honestly thought I'd found him. I thought…It was just a normal kidnapping. You almost gave me some hope there. Almost." Sora felt the guilt well up in him.

"I'm sorry, I should have phrased that better."

"…" Leon shook his hand to rid it of the pain and moved away from the abused wall.

"I'm sorry but…I think Riku went through the same thing that's happening to me now. I need your help to discover what happened to him and what that thing is planning with me."

"Yeah. I know." They were interrupted by Kairi's ring tone, and she fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket.

"Sorry guys," and she wasn't sorry at all. "I've gotta' take this call." And there was her escape route, which she used to full advantage leaving the two to themselves.

"Riku must've been important to you." Sora prompted, trying to ease the tension unsuccessfully.

"He was my only family." Sora's eyes widened and Leon almost rolled his own. "I'm no orphan, but our family don't tend to talk much. Riku is…was…my brother." Sora nodded sagely.

"I wondered why there were no adults in the pictures." He turned back to the wall of smiles, glancing at a million and one Riku's who looked nothing like the one he knew. Or rather, the one he'd seen. His attention was caught by a picture with Riku and a girl. She had platinum blonde hair and pale skin like his own, but someone had scratched out her face. Literally scraping the glossy ink off the picture to render her faceless. Looking at more he found the same, even where she was in backgrounds the fuzzy visage had been massacred. "Leon, why has one person been scratched out of all these photos?"  
"That's Namine. Riku was in love with her."

X

Opening the door, Cid wrinkled his nose. It stank worse than a possum's butt, and he could attest to that. And the kid really needed to clean once in a while. There were feathers everywhere from a burst cushion, and water had taken over everywhere but the living room and one small spot in the kitchen. It looked like someone had taken a chainsaw to a chicken farm and then tried to wash away the evidence with toilet water.

"Damn kids, I was lucky if I got a fucking privy let alone a whole bloody apartment. Don't know they're fucking born. Little crack-heads, the lot of 'em." He grumbling went towards the bathroom, grimacing as he waded through dirty water to get there. Peeking in, he saw a sink full of brown liquid and a floor like a monsoon. This was his forte, and it was Cid Highwind's turn to shine.

He whistled as he worked, setting down his toolbox and pulling out his favourite wrench. A twist here and a tap there. Aha! Now that was some bad lime scale right there. Whoo-ey the kid needed to work more on keeping his pipes in order.

A smash broke him from his happy musings on the life of Sora's pipes, and he looked up. It sounded like it had come from the area of the lounge, perhaps the kitchen. Deciding he didn't want to ruin his reputation by having interrupted someone or let in a burglar, Cid stopped his work and packed his tool kit. Standing with the most professional smile he could muster, more of a constipated smirk than anything, he headed towards the other end of the apartment.

X

"She turned him down when he asked her out, twice actually. I think he was just getting over her when everything first started happening." Leon walked over to the bed, unmade as it was, and brushed his fingers over a plain looking note-pad that was stuffed, fat-full of papers and photos. "The psychiatrist told him to keep a journal to try and make sense of his thoughts. Riku turned it into more of a case file on what was happening to him."

"Psychiatrist?" Sora asked, frowning.

"I thought the stress was getting to him, or that he was on drugs. After he told the police that he was being haunted I knew there was something wrong, so we set up the counselling scheme. I…think I hurt him when I didn't believe him. It was only afterwards, after I saw some of the things he was trying to explain to me that I believed. We all thought he was doing it himself, for attention or whatever. The broken taps and mirrors, the scratches on the walls, even the bruises…" Sora shuddered and Leon picked up the notebook, handing it to him almost as though he was trying to pass on some heavy burden. "Here. Maybe it'll help. It sure didn't help Riku, but he'd be glad someone believed him."

X

The lounge, when he got there, was as empty and sodden as anything. Cid moved on to the kitchen, wincing when he heard another two smashes.

Inside he saw a woman; long hair unbound and down around her shoulders, arms, waist. It desperately needed brushing. In her hand was a plate, which she had taken from the open cupboard beside her. China shards littered the tiles around her bare, blue tinted feet and her ragged, white clothes only made them look worse.

"Uh, sorry, Ma'am." He began. She looked up, one wide eye suddenly making him feel very nervous. "I was called because of plumbing issues-" She let the other plate slip from her hand and it exploded into shrapnel on the floor. Behind her, the main tap blew out of the cabinet top, embedding itself in the ceiling and letting out a fountain of water. She opened her wide, dark mouth and shrieked at him, taking another plate and throwing it at his head. Cid ran.

X

Sora scanned the first page, a mess of notes and doodles of hair and eyes and water. A few things struck him outright, like the blindfold in the corner. Others took him a while to digest, as though Riku had just been throwing his thoughts and experiences onto paper; 'Water, hair and china', 'Squall unaffected', 'Dreams' and 'Okiku legend'.

"Who's Squall?" He asked suddenly.

"Me."

"Oh." Sora waited for Leon to elaborate, but he remained silent, so instead he pulled out some photographs and studied them. There were a few of the ruined bathroom, before it had been drained. Others were of various damaged items around the house; the wardrobe, a car, the bed covered in a mass of plectrums and mattress halfway across the room. The picture he'd taken of the mirror had him with the old camera reflected in the glass. A touch of irony.

Emptying them all onto the bed, Sora began to find more disturbing ones. Ones where he could just make out _her_. Walking outside on the street at night or, perhaps the most unsettling, a photo of the picture wall before Namine's face had been scratched out. Every one of her images had the face of the screaming woman. Sora dropped the photographs like the plague.

"I started to believe him when I saw those. Even Riku wouldn't be so attention-seeking as to hire an actress and dress her up like that. But that was eight weeks into his counselling, he disappeared a week after that." Flipping to the back, Sora found a tally. It had the days down the side, and beside each were nine slashes. Scrawled at the bottom were the words 'only counts to nine'. Sora remembered the counting he'd heard that morning, that had stopped somewhere around nine…probably…

"Riku was thinking very logically about everything. I've been so scared I didn't really take in anything."

"It was his way of dealing with it. He said to me that his science teacher told him there was an answer to everything if you looked past the myth." The door burst open and Kairi grinned at them both, phone beside her buzzing with someone's irate voice.

"Sora, it's Cloud. He's annoyed you haven't been answering his calls." Sora realised his phone was back at the apartment, probably drowning with Riku and his nightmares.

"Eh." He smiled sheepishly. "Let me talk to him." Kairi handed over the phone and gave Leon an apologetic look.

"What the hell is going on there Sora?" Cloud simmered the moment he said hello. "Kairi told me there're some problems."

"Well, yeah, a little thing's come up…"

"What do you mean 'a little thing'? She said you were terrified!" Sora shot Kairi a murderous look.

"You don't have to get worried about me-"

"I'm coming down there."  
"No! No, it's okay. I don't want to drag you into this."

"I'm your brother, it's my job to be dragged into your messes Sora." Kairi grinned at Leon.

"A little over-protective, Sora's brother." Leon raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. They were brought back to the conversation by a loud voice managing to project itself even from the phone.

"'Paranormal activities'?! Goddamnit, I knew mother let you get your own place too early…" Leon walked up to Sora and spoke clearly.

"Don't make the same mistake I did, believe him."

"What? Sora, who was that?"

"It was Leon, uhm, Mister Leonhart, Kairi and I are at his place…Mine got kinda' flooded. It's ah, a long story…"

X

Cid slapped the note on the door and walked very, very briskly down the corridor. When he came to the downstairs corridor he found the man still standing outside his flat, now joined by his wife, both still smiling unnervingly.

"Did you find the problem Mister Highwind?"

"I, uh, found _a _problem. Look, I've…Gotta' rush. Good even'n."

"Goodbye Mister Highwind." They said in perfect unison. The note on Sora's door fluttered. In chirpy, printed font it said 'We called, but you were out! The plumber who visited you today advises that…' below that was scribbled handwriting that shook. 'There's something very weird in your apartment kid. Don't go calling me again.'

AN: If it's crappy half-way through, it's because I started feeling shitty. XD I'm sorry for that, I just couldn't find a way to reword it. I actually scared myself writing the bit with Cid, blow my own trumpet why don't I? Sorry for the lack of Riku, but hopefully you were all entertained by his past, and his being labelled as 'crazy', poor kid. Thanks for reading, and please leave a comment!


	4. I Do The Things I Do?

AN: Yay

AN: Yay. I don't think this chapter would even exist without the responses from yasu-yasu, NightmareFairy and The Vampire Girl. So be very, very nice to them. XD I hope you guys are getting my review replies, since my alerts have up and died on me.

And a note for you all; there will be snippets of Riku's life and how he dealt with the ghost inserted. You are reading Remains still, no worries, hehe. These will be symbolic of Sora reading the journal. In fact, I think I'm going to start with one…

Disclaimer: Guess.

**Remains**

Chapter 4 - …I Do The Things I Do?

Riku heaved a box from the back of the truck, lugging it to the new house. He stalked with it through bare corridors and dropped it in the lounge. Straightening, he popped the joints in his back. They'd been moving in all day, so he hadn't had chance to explore the house, but the living room was already his favourite place. Light streamed in through two large windows on different walls, sunbeams melting into each other in the centre of the carpet. There was a perfect spot for his battered armchair, and bookcases already lined one wall. When he breathed in his lungs were full of dust, fresh air and sunshine. He could feel a new beginning to his life here.

"Hey Leon! Where are you, slacker? Just 'cause you said I could live with you doesn't mean you get to shirk off your duties and leave all your unpacking to your fragile little brother…" He found Leon in the garden, feet propped up on the white plastic table. The bugger was asleep.

Plucking the open magazine from his brother's chest, he snuck behind him and thwacked him round the head.

"Boo!"

"What the fuck! Riku, you little maggot…" Leon growled. It was a good day, with nice weather and pale cherry blossoms.

X

Sora pulled his hood further over his head, and Kairi thrust Riku's journal over hers. Sora pulled it out of her hands with a frown.

"Hey! No fair! You have a hood." Kairi pouted.

"You'll make the ink run. Your hair has survived worse." Kairi was about to retort when they were sharply interrupted.

"Wait!" They turned to see Leon on the front steps, breathing heavily as though he'd just run the length of the house. "Please. I'm coming with you. I want to see Riku again, even if it's only in your mirror." Sora just looked at him for a moment, then shrugged.

"I'm tired of thinking I can stop people from involving themselves in this. And…He is your brother. But I'm warning you now, there's nowhere to sleep and the whole place is flooded."

"I can deal with that. Wait there, I have to go get something."

X

"Demyx! I thought you weren't due back for another week?" Riku asked setting down the paintbrush and wiping his mucky hands on his old jeans.

"Couldn't resist the home cooking, man. And Riku, I've got some awesome news." Demyx swaggered into the kitchen, his sitar already balanced on the tabletop, and opened their recently stocked fridge. He grinned when he saw the leftovers of the meal from the night before, lovingly covered with some cling-film and a sticky note proclaiming that it was 'LEON'S – Don't Touch'. The poor note was ignored, ripped off and dropped into the bin-bag-lined box that passed for a bin.

"Oh yeah? You know, Leon will put your sitar in the canal tied to a bag of bricks if you eat that. Or maybe he'll leave the defenceless instrument and just tie _you_ to the bricks instead."

"He'll have to find me first! Anyway, he can whip up something better than this in no time. Between you and me, I think he's been favouring the paprika too much recently." Demyx told him seriously in conspiratal tones. Riku only hit him as he lifted himself onto the counter.

"Sit in a chair, you hobo. I thought you were going to stop mooching off us now you've got that job at the theatre?"

"Ah, I got fired. They ran out of funds because they didn't impress some big-shot called Sephiroth. But that's the good news, because guess who _did_ impress him?" Demyx asked, excitedly. Riku stole the plate from Demyx's grasp as he scooped up the first spoonful. "Hey! I was gonna' eat that!"

"Yeah well, so was Leon. Deal with it."

"What about me?" Leon came in, hanging up his coat. "Riku, for God's sake I told you not to eat that." Riku glared at Demyx who had started innocently whistling.

"Actually I was saving it from the giant walking dustbin that just materialised in our house." Demyx laughed nervously.

"Great place, by the way. It's looking…uh…spiffy. And from one food lover to another," Demyx ate the spoonful still in his hand, and frowned. "You're using too much paprika."

"…Get out before I throw you in the canal."

"See. I told you." Riku responded, placing the plate back in the fridge.

"You love me really. Besides, I bring good news! Sephirothy-frothy-coffee loved the tapes you made Riku!" Riku raised an eyebrow. "You're going places, just don't forget us little people when you hit the top." Demyx hit him on the shoulder.

It was a good day, where children would play and laugh…

X

Leon came back with the guitar from Riku's room, and a piece of string. Sora asked nothing, and though Kairi raised an eyebrow Leon cut her off.

"I'll give you two a ride there for your trouble."

"Thanks." The car was a hideous little Ford thing that must've needed an MOT every few weeks. Sora watched as Leon placed the guitar carefully in the boot before settling himself in the front seat. Kairi fumed as she was forced to take the back.

"Hold this." Leon chucked the string to Sora and slammed the key into the ignition.

"What is it?" Sora asked, finding himself cupping a silver plectrum threaded onto a string.

"A plectrum on a string. Riku's mother made it for him."

"Riku's…?" Sora slid his finger across the stylised 'Riku' carved into the metal.

"Same dad, different mother."

"I thought you looked different. You know, you guys could almost not be related at all based on looks alone!" Leon grunted and ignored her. Sora had the feeling her chirpy outlook wasn't helping the stoic man, but if wanted to hide his grief so badly Sora supposed he'd brought it on himself. Oblivious to everything, Kairi opened the diary and began scanning through it with interest. She whistled. "Hey, he really liked this Namine person. Lucky girl. Damn, what a romantic."

"I thought you liked romantic guys, Kairi?" She made a face that Sora could only see through the rear-view mirror.

"Yeah. When they're not haunting my best friend." She flipped to the back of the book and gasped. "Geeze, what, did she cheat on him or something?"

"What are talking about Kairi?"

"Here, this page, it's just 'Namine, Namine, Namine' over and over again, but they've all been scribbled out." Sora reached over and took the heavy notebook. Each name was crossed out precisely, but the scribble extended across the whole page, ripping it in places. The next entry was only continued on the next un-ruined page. 'Namine' was carved into almost four pages of the book.

X

"Heya Demyx, I thought you weren't due back for another week." Riku asked tiredly from the little room he was in. Demyx stood nervously in the doorway, fidgeting with his bag.

"Well, they said you weren't getting any better…Leon mentioned they might even move you somewhere else. I wanted to come see you in case they moved you some place I couldn't see you." Riku turned back to the window.

"You think I'm just as crazy as everyone else here, then?" He asked. He felt rather than saw Demyx's gaze flitter away guiltily from his back. Riku sighed. "Look. I don't blame you, some of the shit I come out with sounds like something written by Lewis Carol and R. L. Stine."

"Hey, it could happen. Darn time differences, they always mess up great minds coming together." And just like that Demyx was grinning and Riku was twirling his pen rather than nibbling on it pensively and they were friends who talked about guitars and bands and school and girls again.

"What're you writing?" He asked, dragging the bedside table over to act as a stool.

"Journal. Stupid Psychiatrist Dickweed thinks I should write down all the stuff I 'think I see'."

"Aw, come on. Dickson can't help having been born with a perpetual stick up his butt. What was it you saw this time, anyway?" Demyx leaned over his shoulder and, unabashed, started reading.

"She appeared again. Just…staring at me, through the window." He pointed to the tiny rectangle of glass in the plain door. Demyx shook his head.

"You know, you'd be better off at home than becoming a basket-case vegetable in this room." He stole Riku's pen, and Riku glared at him as he began to doodle smiley faces above all of his 'I's. Demyx grinned as he finished one off with a flourish, making it whistle a few musical notes. "I'm gonna' talk to Leon and see what I can do, I think it's less healthy for you to be stuck in this box-"

"Dem, why did you write that?"

"Huh?" Looking down at the page he was desecrating, Demyx saw he'd scrawled 'Namine'. "Uh, I don't know." His hand began to move on its own, rewriting a second version of the name next to the first. "Riku?" Demyx whispered, watching in horror as his hand ignored his brain's orders. "Riku, it won't stop!"

"Let go Demyx!" The page was beginning to fill, and the solitary light flickered. Riku saw her again at the window. "No! You will _not_ fuck with him, I won't let you get to my friends!" He snarled at her, feeling more anger than fear. A faint resignation had fixed itself in his mind and her form was more and more a burden and less and less a terror. Turning from her wide-eyed stare, he ripped the pen from Demyx's fingers and snapped it in half. Ink covered his fingers like blood, and then an awful scratching started on the window that faced the street.

Demyx was looking at it, horrified, as a gash was brutally carved into the glass. It began to form letters, words. It didn't falter for a second, not until the full stop that cracked the glass at the end. Riku didn't have to look to know what it said.

"I don't want her, damnit." He muttered. Demyx launched himself at him.

"Oh God, Riku. Oh my fucking God. Did you see that? Of course you saw that…Jesus, you've been telling the truth this whole time. Shit, _shit._ I'm gonna' tell Leon, and we'll get you out of here. I'm so sorry I didn't believe you, so, so sorry." And he was hugging so tight, and Riku could almost believe things might be getting better.

X

There was nowhere near Sora's apartment to park, so they all ended up walking through the rain. Kairi had only muttered something about 'investing in some umbrellas if we're going be assaulted by water every day…' before lapsing into silence. They all felt trepidation as they neared Sora's building. Sora had never hated the sight of his own keys so much.

The bottom corridor was deserted when they were finally given respite from the rain. The mirror where Sora had last seen Riku was empty, and nothing alluded to there being a missing boy and screaming spectre hiding in his water pipes. He lead them in silence to the staircase and up to his apartment, frowning at the note on the door.

"That stupid ghost scared away your plumber!" Kairi exclaimed indignantly. Leon just shook his head.

"Same thing happened to us. We got a polite phone call saying that we were banned from ever using Quick-Fix Plumbing again after our 'harassment' of their employees."

"Hopefully she's not drowned him in my tub or something." Sora responded, only half joking. He slid his keys into the lock and creaked the door on, entering and feeling relieved when the lights switched on. His living room was a mess, and he couldn't remember having seen his cushions decimated before he left.

"Sora…Compared to your place Leon's bathroom looks positively _homey._" Kairi gasped, picking up one white feather and letting it float lazily back to the floor. Leon poked his head around the kitchen door.

"She got your plates. You might want to buy some plastic ones. It'll just keep happening." He said monotonously. Sora ignored him and took Kairi's hand.

"What?" She asked. "Scared to go to your room all on your own?"  
"Yes." Sora responded curtly, and she rolled her eyes but took a better grip on his fingers. Together they walked to his room.

The ceiling and walls were a grimy grey, leaving lines where the water had run down his bedroom and corridor walls. Empty of missing boys and corpses. In the middle of the room the bed itself was ruined, bits of china thrown all over the soaking sheets and pictures smashed on the desk. It looked like the bed from Riku's photograph.

"The bathroom is where it all started. We'll have to check there." Sora said quietly. Kairi squeezed his hand comfortingly and gave him an awkward half-hug with the other.

"It's okay, I'll be with you. I'm not scared." Sora had no doubt she would be, should the woman still be floating in his floor, but said nothing. He instead concentrated on forcing himself to walk towards the bathroom and ignoring the alarm bells in his head.

He didn't want to be a coward, but he didn't try to take over when Kairi lent forward and pushed the bathroom door open herself. He had stood there for quite a while staring at it, after all. It turned out that all his fears were for naught however, when all that greeted them was a wet floor and a sink and bath with dark water at their bottoms.

"It's all safe Leon!" Kairi called chirpily. Sora firmly closed the bathroom door and walked back to the living room. A mug was thrust in front of his face and his stomach grumbled. He hadn't eaten all day.

"Here, drink. I'm a chef so don't look at me like that. It's not like I could kill you with soup anyway." Leon grumbled. Sora took it with a small smile.

"Thanks."

"Ooh, soup. Good thinking Mister Leonheart." Kairi said, bringing in two more mugs from the kitchen. She swooped onto the sofa, which was thankfully dry, and set her cup down with a 'clack' against the dark glass tabletop. "Right. Let's see if anyone shows up, hm?"

X

Riku was very glad to be home. After Demyx's sighting, Leon was begrudgingly beginning to believe him, and he was no longer being viewed as an attention seeking, fit throwing brat. His easy relationship with his brother had become tense and distant thanks to all the unexplainable things happening, but they were slowly patching everything up. Demyx had even moved in for a bit, just to keep an eye on things. He helped him take photos and things, especially when he got bruised and couldn't document the bruises himself. Feeling nature calling, he left his contemplative state and moved to the bathroom.

And that's when things started to get weird.

Just as he was about to turn off the tap after washing his hands, he was pulled backwards into the shower. His shower, the one that didn't work, then turned on at full jet and the door swung closed. Spluttering in the cold water, he tried to open the glass door. It wouldn't budge.

"Leon! Demyx!" He yelled. His clothes were sticking to him, and goosebumps were raising on his bare skin. The showerhead broke off and it became more of a hose, barraging him with water. The shower began to fill up. He was damned if he was going to drown in his own shower, so he fumbled around at the base for the broken handle of the showerhead, gripping it tightly when it came into reach. Taking the biggest swing he could in the confined space, he smashed it against the glass.

It refused to break. After all the smashed china and broken mirrors, the glass _would not break_.

"Leon!"

He swung again, and again, but to no avail. When the main window smashed just to rub it in his face, and the toilet lid swung up and down, clanging in a mad fit, he knew he was cursed. And when the shower steamed up so he couldn't see out of the glass, and Leon was banging at the door that wouldn't open, and cold, cold fingers grasped his ankles, he knew he was doomed.

X

They slept on the couch. Leon was across from them, sitting in a refined position in the arm chair, and Kairi's head was in Sora's lap. He toyed with her hair as she slept, a nervous gesture. They'd tried to stay up with him, but Kairi had succumbed first, asleep before she'd laid down. Leon hadn't promised to stay up at all, but Sora watched him fight his dropping eyelids and watching him with masked concern. He felt slightly safer knowing that a fairly strong, if unknown, stranger knew about his predicament and was looking out for him.

But Leon had been drained emotionally from everything that day, and he succumbed as well.

That left Sora alone, on his couch. The light had been left on, at his request, but he didn't expect that to scare any monsters away. He couldn't sleep though. Fear gripped him, leaving his mouth dry and making him open his eyes and scan the room every time he heard a noise. It came to the point where they were open more than they were closed, and then he resigned himself to a sleepless night. Without waking Kairi, he'd managed to reach for the journal, and now had it resting open on the arm of the couch. As he read, he wanted to see Riku more. He wanted to compare the Riku he heard about and the Riku he knew and see if they were the same, he wanted to show Riku that the journal was wrong; people did believe him and they were there to help. Late, but there.

And finally, he wanted to show Riku that he'd come back and hadn't abandoned him.

A thump made him start, stirring Kairi into a groan. Another came, and he noticed the glass table move with it. Kairi's empty cup fell off it to land with a thud on the floor. She began to wake.

Sora's gaze was fixated on the table, watching intently. And it happened again, but this time he could see what it was. Riku rose in the table as one would in water, reaching the glass and banging it with his fists. It was like he was trapped under ice, trying to break free. Air bubbles rose like blooming flowers around his face. Pink lips were open in dismay and horror as he realised the barrier he couldn't see was not going to give way.

A mixture of fear and an overwhelming need to help took Sora in its grip. Riku was in pain, and now Sora could see him as a person instead of a spectre he had to help him. But what if it was a trap? Or maybe Riku was already dead, or working for the woman. Or coming back to kill Leon in a vengeful rage for not helping him or…

Sora could see he was struggling to breathe. His heart made the decision for him.

Shoving Kairi off he grabbed the nearest lampshade and swung with all his might at the table.

There was an ominous crack.

Water seeped from the break that was slowly clawing its way down the table side. The intense pressure forced it apart into two halves, exploding in a shower of debris, but before it rained shards down on them all Sora was pulled back roughly. The blast skimmed his head, a wave of water laced with deadly slithers of glass. Leon was shielding him, but was moving fast, ignoring the splinters on the floor. An instant after the dust had settled he was on his feet and reaching down deep into the water coming from the table. It was too deep to be a simple puddle, by all means his arms should have been reaching into the room below.

"Damnit Riku, don't sink!" He growled, heaving with all his might. A white head emerged, and slowly Leon pulled the limp body from the water which had begun to recede. It retracted into the carpet with the fizzing of thousands of tiny bubbles and a sick pop.

Leon had already rolled Riku onto his back, checking for a pulse. In one swift movement he straddled him and began to pump the sodden chest with his hands.

"Come on Riku, take a breath. Just one breath. Come _on_." The body jerked and Leon let out an unclear sound of achievement. Rolling the boy over, he hit his back forcefully and water spluttered out of his mouth. Riku finally took a sharp gasp and sat up rod-straight, shoving Leon away. Leon warily watched him, horrified that his little brother could be so scared of him. "Riku? Are you alright?" He reached out towards the silver haired boy, but Riku just scrambled away.

"No!"

"Riku, it's Leon. It's okay." Leon pleaded, reaching out again, slowly so as not to startle him again.

"L-Leon?" Leon tapped a couple of fingers against Riku's shaking hand. Feeling the warmth that could only come from the living, Riku sagged. "Oh, God, Leon." He moved forward blindly beneath the blindfold until Leon scooped him up and hugged him close. Kairi dragged Sora away to get some towels and give the two brothers a moment.

"Yeah, it's me. I was so scared I'd lost you Ri, so scared." Riku said nothing, but stifled a sob and tightened his grip on his older brother. He was here, and this was now, and he could feel something other than water and pain and cold. Leon let go reluctantly and smoothed Riku's wet hair, frowning at the blindfold. He began to untie it.

"Here. I got some towels." Sora handed the fluffy white cloth to Leon, but they both stopped when Riku stiffened again. "I'm sorry, should I move away?" Sora asked quietly, worried he'd scared the other boy again. He seemed so lost compared to the boy that wrote sarcastically in his journal about his 'Dickweed' psychiatrist and the strong, ghostly boy who'd protected him from the grip of cold, dead hands.

"It's okay Ri, there's two other people here called Sora and Kairi. I'm helping them-"

"Sora?" Riku reached out as the blindfold fell, tentatively probing the air to find Sora's location. "Is it really you?"

"Yeah. You remember then. I'm glad." Sora smiled. Riku's hand bumped his shoulder, but Leon's protective grip wouldn't allow him to travel further. Sora took it instead, and gasped as Riku finally looked up at him. The beautiful green had been washed from his eyes, leaving only a bleached, milky version in their wake.

"I remember. I only wish I could see you, just once."

AN: AND THAT'S IT. Until I get back off holiday at least. But…The FMA fandom might get angry with me for neglecting my only other living fic, so there may be a gap between chapters five and six as well, just so I can update my story there. Sorry about that. And a 'boot' of a car is a trunk, in case anyone was wondering…XD

This chapter ran away with itself and eloped. Riku's appearance was meant to happen half way through. They're meant to be having meaningful conversations with him now. But bunnies got in the way, and they gnawed at my soul until I wrote a little about Riku's torment and gave Leon, Kairi and Sora some bonding time.

The idea of stealing food from other people's fridges when they have expressed an overwhelming desire for you not to belongs to Dr Megalomania, who writes some of THE most amazing stuff.


	5. Don't Turn Out The Lights

AN: And OMG I'm back…XD Once exam leave starts I can write more, but until then updates maybe a little strained

AN: And OMG I'm back! XD And I finally, _finally,_ own Kingdom Hearts II! I CAN NOW CLAIM THAT I HAVE PLAYED IT ALL THE WAY TO THE END AND _BEAT SEPHIROTH_.

Behind the times? Why yes, thank you. I only got a PS2 this year.

And now the new KH games are allegedly on PSP. GAY.

Anyway, thanks to sad kuroneko, OceanFae, PhinMaginONLY, Lunarkitty15, chocolateriku, Axel's Ashes (especially!), Shade of Euphoria, Isler, Chaos Raider Tenshi, SuperFriendlySoraFan203, yasu-yasu, DeathlyRose, NightmareFairy, Dust to Dusk, Hatsue, Shadow Crystal Sage and Smiley Smackdown for your reviews.

And I hope to clear up some stuff in this chapter. Someone mentioned the pace was a bit quick. (Thank you!) If you think certain scenes or areas of the plot or character interaction are happening too quickly, _please for the love of moogles_ tell me. I'll go back and revise it. It seriously helps me as a writer and means the story has less chance of being discontinued. Thanks!

Disclaimer: DX I owneth not! TRUE COLOURS, NEVER FORGET,

**Remains**

Chapter 5 – Don't Turn Out The Lights

Riku still shivered even underneath towels and blankets while his clothes hung like boneless corpses over the radiator that refused to work. Every cell screamed 'sleep!' at him, but he couldn't close his sightless eyes for a second in case he missed something. Every sound was her footstep, every tree branch on the window her nails scraping the floor, every touch her icy embrace ready to drag him back to the darkness. She was coming for Sora, he knew, and probably Leon and Demyx too now that they were involved…And him. She would always be coming for him.

Warmth of a body told him that Leon was sat next to him, seemingly unmovable from his side. Riku desperately wanted to tell him to leave, but the selfish part of him, that traitorous bit that was still terrified and screaming, kept him from speaking up. He wanted his brother near. He wanted these people to wipe the nightmare away and finally allow him peace.

"I found it." Sora smiled warily, handing Kairi a forty year-old hairdryer the colour of clay. Riku tensed as he heard footsteps approaching. Was it her? Was she coming? When was she going to tear his brief respite apart?

Watching the conflicting emotions worm their way over the frozen boy's face, Sora felt a lump rise in his throat. This could be him, and Cloud could be the one combing the streets and putting up the posters…

Suddenly he wished his older brother _was_ with him, and not on the other end of a phone call.

He glanced over to the brothers. It felt so strange to have the ghostly boy sitting on his couch, looking quite the opposite to dead and very real. The dull, sleep-slowed links of his mind couldn't place the two images he had of Riku as the same person, because he had different connections with each. This Riku was coming back to life, in both senses of the phrase, and beginning to act more and more like the personality from the satirical journal. The Riku that had watched him run from the apartment, a wet spectre dripping from him, seemed to have been locked away; banished with the comfort of being surrounded by people once more. That Riku had looked at him so intently, but so _emptily_. It had made him almost want to cry. Sora, somewhat selfishly, decided never to let Riku pierce him with such a look again.

Leon seemed to be having trouble believing his brother existed at all. Although he sat close he didn't touch the pale boy, afraid he'd simply disappear again, or that he'd wake up to the sounds of dripping water in his destroyed house to find it was all a bitter-sweet dream. He watched Riku, the boy's pupils darting unseeingly over Sora's furniture seeking danger. Every muscle was still bow-taught. The times he chose to speak limited to short sentences so he could listen intently, only to take in sharp breaths at every noise.

Kairi tapped Riku's arm. When he lifted his head she pressed the hair dryer into his hands and dropped a small towel on his head.

"You'll only feel worse if you sit there with wet hair and end up getting sick. Dry your hair and we'll get you into some of Sora's clothes. You've got some that don't fit, right Sora?"

"Sure."

"And then we're getting out of this dump." She declared triumphantly. Her only acknowledgement was Leon turning on the hair dryer; it gurgled and spluttered out lukewarm air.

"It would be nice…" Riku smiled minutely. "To feel the sun again."

X

Unfortunately there was no sun. Only grey, blotted clouds that kept the air at a bearable temperature. Riku was desperate to leave the apartment, sure that She was following.

Because escape had been too easy.

He'd been in the darkness so long. Days and nights and dates and time merging into an endless tunnel of black. The only thing that broke the darkness any longer were her torments. When they came, he would heave himself up and run. He might not have even been moving at all, because he never got anywhere, never hit anything. The only thing he ever touched was the water swirling around his ankles and her cold, boney limbs as they twined together to squeeze any residual happiness from his wasted form.

When he stopped he could hear his own breaths coming raggedly over the unnatural swill of the water. His legs had been numb even before he'd begun to run, but now they simply wouldn't move. Trying to bend them he lost strength and fell, landing with a muted splash that sounded like it came from a quiet radio somewhere far off. The water tugged at his clothes and fingers, pulling him backwards towards her. Ever guiding him towards death.

Another splash sounded a few metres behind him and he stiffened. His ears were on alert, waiting for her next movement.

Nothing.

Biting his lip until his mouth filled with blood, he forced himself up again and moved onward. When he fell he crawled, and when his hands went numb in the water he clawed doggedly onward. They were precisely the reason he didn't feel the rough stones when he found them, those frozen hands.

Massaging the blood back into his fingers, Riku reached out. A ring of stones was before him, the middle of which dropped down and down forever. Far below he could hear water. Or perhaps that was just the river clawing at his feet. Or maybe it was her.

Hands like pewter and hair like wire, wrapping around him and ripping his clothes his hair his face his _eyes_…And he fell through the ring of stones and down and down forever.

_Down and down forever…_That's what Leon always told him about the well in their old garden. _That well will never let you touch the ground unless you see the white rabbit, just like in Alice in Wonderland._

And then he saw Sora.

With a splash he broke the surface of the well's water. Riku was still unsure how he saw the light, being blind under his blindfold and surrounded by shadow, but he had. Or maybe it had seen him. It didn't matter; what mattered was the golden disk beneath him at the bottom of the well, and the sight he found beyond it. A boy in a world that tried its damndest to get in his way, but who never gave up his smile. Riku's very own white rabbit.

She watched the same boy from the window with the same eyes that had watched Riku and suddenly he knew. She was taking him once she was done with Riku - whatever it was she was actually going to _do_ with Riku.

At that time he'd been prepared to give himself up to her. It hurt to much to live, and he couldn't continue in constant fear of her return, with every nerve screaming every waking moment. He would have been glad to just quietly slip away and leave it at that. But, to see someone who hadn't yet been ruined by her presence threatened had lit a fire underneath him.

He could blurrily see the world he used to live in thanks to her watching Sora. That meant hope. He wanted Sora to live and be free. That meant war. She'd always seemed less terrifying when he viewed her as an enemy, and now they fought for the same prize he had something to continue on for.

The well was the key to the real world, and important to Her for some reason. Riku hadn't known then what that reason was, but it hadn't mattered then either. What mattered was the white rabbit, and who got to him first.

X

"Hey, Riku?" He turned his head calmly in the direction of the voice talking to him. Sora frowned at the sudden lack of paranoia. "You seemed sort of out of it, are you okay? If you keep lagging, we'll lose you in the crowd and Leon will have conniptions." Sora grinned, despite the fact he knew the other teen couldn't see him. It was…_hard _talking to Riku. He'd been through so much more than all of them and was in so much more pain. He felt as though he was trying to talk to a war veteran whilst wearing a combat outfit; uncomfortable, embarrassed and yet greatly indebted. He never had trouble with people. People were Sora's forte. And this sudden block was making him overcompensate with smiles and forced cheerfulness.

He wondered numbly if Riku could tell he was a fraud.

"Sorry." Silence loomed.

"Hey guys, hurry up! I want milkshake, stat!" Kairi waved at them. Sora sighed in relief, knowing that she was trying to give Riku some normalcy in the hopes he would calm down. He was lucky to have her as a friend.

As a _friend_.

Only.

As.

A.

Fr-

"Stop that." Riku said sharply, grabbing his hand with a frown. "Don't let her pull you in."

She wouldn't help.

Him as much.

As she was.

Helping Riku.

"Sora!"

"Huh?"

"She's using your feelings for Kairi to find you." Sora blushed hotly.

"I-I don't have feelings for…For Kairi…"

"Sure. Just make sure you don't dwell on those feelings you don't have." Riku suddenly gave a small smile and nudged Sora in the ribs, blindly missing his arm. "And stop spacing, you seem 'sort of out of it'." Sora only half understood, but the sight of a genuine smile on Riku's too-pale face made him grin in spite of it. He laughed despite himself.

"Alright." He tightened his tanned fingers around Riku's hand. "Come on, I'll lead so you don't get lost. Not that I think you'll get lost, or that you're incapable or anything…It's just the crowd is kinda' big and…whatever…"

Riku was content to let him ramble. Her presence had been coming closer, but he'd guessed right in that it was Sora's doing. Maybe he really _could_ help the boy who lead him back to the light. He smirked to himself. _One, nil to me. Your move._

X

"_One…"_

X

Something was dropped on the table in front of Riku, and he raised one slender eyebrow in enquiry. He heard slurps and slops from his left, and since Leon wouldn't be caught dead making a noise even remotely similar, assumed it must be Sora or Kairi. A shadow wavered before him.

Sora waved his hand cheerfully before Riku's nose, until he realised that trying to catch a blind person's attention that way wouldn't work. Instead he lifted the paper cup filled with chocolate milkshake a shook it so that it made a noise. Riku flinched back as it flew towards him.

As a nondescript noise emerged from him, the table collectively gasped.

A hand found his and clutched.

"Can you see?" Leon. The whisper betrayed how worried he really was. Riku hated to let him down.

"No."

"But, you flinched…" Kairi began.

"I can see…shadows. Imprints, if something dark is contrasted against something light."

"Why didn't you tell me?" Leon, again. Leon angry. But there, at least Leon was _there._

_No. Do _not_ get all mopey again. _

"In case it stopped." _In case she noticed and came to take my sight and my soul back into the well._

"Maybe…Maybe, with time in the light, you'll get your sight back."

"I hope so." Riku's tone signalled the end of the conversation. He couldn't hope because he knew, he knew. He needed to make sure the topic didn't go that way; they'd only hurt themselves with the knowledge… "Sora, I want you to meet Demyx."

"The musician?" Sora responded quickly, excited to finally know something without having to have it explained.

"Yeah…How…?"

"I…uh." Now that Riku wasn't dead, now that he was there and a human and a _person_, it seemed so very rude to have read his most intimate thoughts from a book kept through the worst part of his life. "I sort of…read your journal, thing…I'm really sorry but we needed to know what was going on to find a way to get you back and-" Riku allowed himself a small chuckle, held up a hand, and interrupted.

"I suppose it's only fair. I have been watching your every movement for weeks; consider us even for me seeing you in your paupu-fruit boxers." Sora squeaked indignantly, and Leon's frown got, if possible, slightly more disgruntled.

"You were watching me in my _underwear_?" Riku shrugged and leant back with his hands behind his head. His smirk made Sora blush. Oh boy, was it just him, or was it getting _hot_ in there?

"Maybe."

"I didn't raise you to become a pervert, Riku." Leon growled.

"You know you love me for it."

"I love you in _spite_ of it."

"You big softie." Riku got a half-hearted punch on the arm for his efforts, and he grinned as the brotherly banter began to flow freely between them again. He'd missed this so damn much…

"_Two..."_

He cleared his throat. "Anyway, guys, you wanna' meet Demyx? I'd like to see him again. It's been…a while."

"Sure." Sora's voice was soft as he appeared out of nowhere to help the teen up. He considered holding Riku's hand again, it thrilled him to feel the human pulse beneath the silver-haired boy's skin, but embarrassment made him limit his contact with the teen to light, guiding touches.

X

Riku noticed the absence of aid from Sora, and as the touches became less frequent, thumps and bumps from passers by came more plentifully. A drop hit his nose and he wondered if the sky was grey and boiling with dark, tempestuous clouds. When another drop hit the bare skin of his arm, he knew it was raining.

Someone shoved him to the side, and their umbrella dumped its load of water over him.

Damn.

Trying to ignore the cold, he let his thoughts wonder. So, Sora wore paupu boxers? This was an interesting development. Riku _did_ watch him constantly, but not with his eyes. Not his blind, useless, dead eyes. Riku used his mind to probe the darkness of the well. When he saw Sora, he was a golden light condensed into a boy-shape. Occasionally he fancied he caught part of a grin, but in reality he couldn't make out details. And thusly the boxers had been a complete guess. But a good one, apparently.

He was getting nudged and shoved less, probably due to the crowd dispersing in the rain. He sought out Leon's guiding presence through the mindless blurs around him, but failed.

"Leon?" No answer.

"Hellooo…? Blind guy getting lost here. Sora?" Still no answer. He sighed, knowing it was only a matter of time until someone saw he had lagged and came back to find him. Plus, he'd sworn before that he could find his way to Demyx's work blind-folded with having to pick him up so many times. Time to test the theory.

He felt around until he hit a wall. Brushing his fingers along it, he followed its line to a corner. No cars on the road, must be the bicycle path. That meant a left. Probably.

His feet were starting to make slaps on the wet ground, splashing in puddles. He hit another wall. No, wait, there wasn't meant to be a wall there. He'd turned wrongly somewhere…

"_Three…"_

Ohshitnonotnow! Give me time, just a little more time. I want to see Demyx, and annoy Leon and tease Sora and eat some chocolate for the first time in _weeks._

His trousers were getting soaked, water creeping up the backs and sticking them to his calves. He assumed it was his trousers. He ignored his paranoia telling him it was hair.

Whatever it was he tripped on didn't give him chance. He landed with a sick thud in the growing puddles and groaned.

The dirty rain water cooled his head. Nothing had grabbed him or ripped at him or made even a smidgeon of sound. If he just got up now and walked away, he might find he'd just escaped.

Placing his hands on the wet tarmac, fingers splayed out, he lifted himself up. But as his weight settled on his arms, the ground gave way beneath him. His arms sank into the puddle and away into the icy darkness that even after milkshake and underwear still wanted to consume him.

He screamed, despite having known the entire day that he'd have to return some time. He writhed and struggled and pushed at the cemented quick-sand that pulled him down. He opened his mouth and roared.

Hands that burned pulled him backwards and hard against the rough earth. They smothered him to a chest that heaved and scorched his frozen skin, and then a shadow loomed. A mess of browns and blacks.

"Riku! Riku, it's okay, it's okay. I'm here and…and she's gone I swear." Hands smoothed his hair and held him still. "It's okay, everything's alright…" Riku clutched the clothing beneath him and pushed up. The black was…A pair of too-short trousers. And a jacket. And the light brown…He touched it tentatively, brushing cold fingers along it until he could feel the texture through his numb skin. That was a collar bone, and that, that was a neck. And those soft fibres tickling his knuckles was hair. Oh god, he knew that voice at least.

"Sora…"

X

Sora sucked in a breath at the frozen digits caressing his neck. They moved up to his face, memorising curves and features and verifying that he was safe. And he let them, because Riku was shaking and looking ready to bolt.

"Sora…"

The fingers brushed his eyebrows, and he closed his eyes as touches ghosted over them to cup his cheek and smooth over his lips.

"Mmhm. That's me." He whispered quietly.

"I think…" Riku whispered back. "That when I can touch you, and see your imprint, I can…almost imagine your face." As the hands drifted to brush some chocolate strands from his eyes, they pulled back as though burned. "Oh god! I'm…I'm sorry I just wanted to know who you were and then when I knew it was you I wanted to…to know what you looked like..." Sora burst forward and enveloped him in a hug before he made the awkwardness between he and Riku permanent.

"No harm done. Stop being a sap, and we'll go see Demyx, okay?" Riku seized up, apparently waiting for the rebuke that wasn't forthcoming. When Sora refused to let go, Riku gave his arm a brief squeeze, and then pulled away with a nod.

"Yeah." He replied. Sora grabbed his hand.

"And I won't be letting go of this again." He said. Riku could make out a grin, just a flash of white on tan. And then they were off, into the rain.

"_Four…"_

X

"It's the one with the TVs in the window. 'Something Electronics'." Riku explained.

"Moogle Electronics?"

"Yeah." Sora tugged him forwards, and he heard the whoosh of automated doors before the central heating of the shop washed over him. It smelt like new plastic and silicon in the electronics store. The whir of fans kept the silence at bay.

"Demyx?" Riku said into the comfortable quiet.

"Yo! I'm coming, just let me…Right, done. Who is it?" Round the corner came a tall, lanky boy with a blond Mohawk and sparkling eyes. He grinned brightly as he searched for his caller, but as soon as his eyes hit Riku's wet form his face fell like bricks.

"Hey Dem." Riku gave a little wave, and Demyx's eyes widened to huge proportions.

"Holy Jesus on a freaking _stick_, Riku! _Riku_?"

"Yup. Riku." Riku let his hand fall back to his side and waited for another response. Sora watched Demyx as he crossed the carpeted floor to stop in front of the silver-haired boy beside him. Reaching out with a thoughtful expression, Demyx let his fingers lightly brush Riku's cheek. Then a grin exploded across his face and he'd grabbed Riku in a headlock and began to noogie his scalp.

"You stupid goof! We were worried man! I mean, what the hell _happened_? And who's that?" He pointed at Sora with his free hand and Riku pried the arm from around his neck with some difficulty.

"That is Sora. Okiku's new target." Silence descended.

"Ah." Demyx looked thoughtful for a moment. "Does that mean you're off the hook now? What was it, like a slap on the hand and a 'don't do it again' sort of thing?" Riku hit him.

"Shut up, Dem. You of all people should know it's more than that." Of everyone involved, even Leon, Riku had only mentioned his theories and feelings about his experiences to Demyx. He was also the only person that Riku had told the ghost's name. After the sighting in the mental ward, Demyx had believed everything and had over time become a trusted confidante.

Somehow, Riku felt more in control around someone who viewed the haunting as a mission rather than a curse. Only Demyx would allow him that viewpoint.

"I'm protecting him from Her. He's important." Sora simply blushed, but Demyx raised an eyebrow before knitting them together. Riku looked at him sternly, hoping he'd ask what he'd meant later.

He dropped it.

"Have you seen Leon yet? You've got to see him right away. I stayed with him after your…disappearance…The guy cried himself to sleep, Ri. He hates the fact he didn't believe you. He strings himself up and whips himself with it, and I'm worried…" Riku looked pale, and shocked. Sora took this to mean that Leon didn't cry often. He certainly didn't seem the type.

"I've seen him." Riku replied quietly.

"Good. How's he holding up?"

"Okay, I guess."

"Alright then. So tell me where you've been, I need some damn good excuses…" Sora took this as his cue to leave. Riku would tell him what he'd been through when he wanted to, if he wanted to at all. Sora was not about to betray his trust by eavesdropping on an emotional conversation between two friends.

Even if it was tempting.

Instead he began to wander around the store, brushing his fingers over touch-sensitive displays and taking childish delight in how they changed under his ministrations. He heard a noise to his left beyond the shelves, and felt himself immediately tense. Taking up a nearby craft knife for opening the delivery boxes by the display, he moved forward to investigate.

X

"What, were you in the alps or something? You look like you haven't eaten in _weeks_."

"I haven't." Demyx looked flabbergasted, before swiftly turning to the nearest staff vending machine and clunking coins into the slot for chocolate bars. As they tumbled out he stuffed them in a protesting Riku's pockets and the remaining ones into his hands.

"Eat. Now. You twig. What did She do to you?"

"The usual, only this time it was on Her territory. I don't know where…But the only place I get to see is Sora's apartment."

"So, what, are they working together or something? He cast some sort of voodoo on you?" Demyx held up his hands and wiggled his fingers in an attempt at appearing mystical.

"No…It's just, well, he's the only light where She is, Dem. Because She watches him, I watch him. I'm fighting Her for him, and it's the only thing that keeps me going there."

"Geeze, _geeze_. Stop it you'll make me cry or something." Demyx pulled Riku into a hug and clung tightly for a few minutes.

"You know, all this hugging is starting to make me feel like a rag doll."

"It's your own fault for getting ghost-napped." Riku unwrapped the chocolate bar behind Demyx's back and sniffed it.

"What is this, anyhow?" Demyx pulled back, aghast.

"It's a Mars Bar, you goof…Can't you read, or wha-…? _Shit! _That bitch. _Bitch. _Look, now you made me goddamn cry. I…Riku…I can't believe you were there so long. I thought you were _dead_." Demyx wiped furiously at his eyes, but they kept on streaming. "And now She's…I mean, I tried every priest and shrine and spell and _whatever _in books and on the net but nothing. And now you're here." He stopped. "If you're here, where is She?" Riku shrugged.

"If both Sora and I are here, She'll follow eventually. I won't be able to stay for long."

"Don't say that! Maybe… this time…" Riku shook his head sadly, but didn't attempt to argue. She was coming, and he knew it.

X

Sora began to mutter as he rounded each shelf to find nothing but blinking televisions blaring out beautiful faces. Each section took him towards the dark glass of the outer windows, and he caught himself searching for lingering faces in the gloom. His heartbeat filled him, making his bones rattle and the blood in his head pump to an unheard beat.

The knife in his hand was so small, and looked so blunt in the static yellow light of the shop's lighting strips. He almost snorted as he thought it had probably been ironically blunted for staff safety. Fear of making any noise locked the laugh in his throat.

A thump shook the glass in its wooden frame, and Sora startled so hard his eyes refused to fix on anything and he went blind with colour for a moment. Breathing in deeply like he'd seen pregnant women do on ER, he readied himself to turn the corner.

_It's just a corner,_ he thought, _if She's behind it, it isn't going to protect me. I need to look first to warn Riku and Leon. _But Leon wasn't there, and perhaps She'd got to him and Kairi first. Perhaps She was picking them off one by one and _he was next_.

With a small cry he flung himself round the corner to brandish the knife at the window. An empty street glared back at him, unhappily filling its drains with rain.

_Thump.Whack.Bang._

He lifted his fingers to the window and felt the reverberations running through it at each blow. Something was definitely hitting it.

He walked along, dragging his fingers along the glass. The knife was held weakly in his grasp, his fear making his grip weaker than a kitten's. If he had to use it he'd drop it. He focussed on putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to step on the cracks between the tiles like he had when he was younger. Maybe, if he avoided all the cracks, the bears would leave him alone…

A scuttle of white shot across the window behind him as another thump sounded. He could see the doors now, and the figure thumping with full strength and feet and fists on their electric surfaces.

Leon.

Behind him he heard a screech and he saw her, suspended, bug like, hanging on all fours from the glass, water sticking her tattered clothes to her thin, twisted body. She cocked her head slowly as she regarded him with wide, wide eyes that showed an impossible amount of white against the strands of her black hair. Sora tore his own blue eyes away and ran for the door.

He could hear her behind him, rattling along the windows at an alarming speed, nails scratching the glass as he ran towards the door. Leon and Kairi were out there, unprotected, locked in the rain and left at her mercy. He had to open the doors before she reached them, he _had_ to.

She was alongside him, but she didn't look ahead at her oncoming path, she was still fixated on him, her mouth wide and gaping as she spilled more water onto the seeping pavements. Sora ran faster.  
He opened his lungs, two butterflies, and felt the net of nerves and wires and tendons begin to strain. The pistons that made his upper legs began to pump faster as his pink lips sucked in the recycled air, and he was upon them.

Kairi had spotted the creature hurtling towards them like a demented spider, and she was screaming at Leon through the wind. Leon had stopped thumping at the appearance of Sora, somehow he managed to look both relieved and terrified at the same time. He smiled weakly when Sora nodded. Yes. Riku was here. Riku was safe.

Just as she was about to collide with the pair, Leon pulled a long branch seemingly up from nowhere and swiped.

She was gone.

Sora ran for the emergency open button on the automatic doors, and they opened with a calm, professional whoosh.

X

"_Five…"_

X

Leon stumbled in with the wind and the rain, until it was abruptly cut off again by the blessed, blessed doors. Kairi emerged from behind him and enveloped Sora in a hug.

"Thank you." His heart began to thump again. She released him.

"We have to t-tell Riku." Sora said, adrenalin fading and weariness taking over. Kairi nodded, and Leon was already striding towards the back of the store.

They found Demyx and Riku sat behind the counter on the padded computer chairs form the display. As they came within earshot, Riku accidentally hit the lever that adjusted the chair's height and he sank down with a yelp.

"We have to go." Leon's deep baritone cut off Demyx's oncoming laughter.

"Leon. Leon, Riku…" Leon nodded at Demyx, but reached behind the counter and pulled his brother up gently.

"We have to go." He repeated.

"Oh." Was all that Riku said. And then; "Somehow, I don't think there's much point."

"She was just here. If I hadn't picked up a branch to try and break the shop windows…"

"Alright." Riku said sharply. He wasn't going to argue. Demyx could have been right… "Lets go."

Sora took Riku's hand again, and Kairi took up his other. They looked like an odd string of beads, holding hands in a row, but it seemed to fit. Riku was smiling sadly as they neared the double doors. It felt so complete, to be there with his brother and best friend, holding the hands of people he almost felt he had bonds with but couldn't quite place. The white rabbit and his princess.

Kairi suddenly let go to run to the windows. Riku felt almost like a part of him was missing after experiencing such companionship.

"I don't see anything. Maybe She left." Leon moved around her to double check. He scoured the lamp posts with his eyes and combed the yellow streets, reflecting the lights back at themselves through the rain. Sora moved to press the emergency switch again.

"Is it safe, Riku?"

"She's not outside. I'm sure."

X

"_Six…"_

X

"Alright." Sora smiled, and the trust radiating from him made Riku want to be ill. As the brunette lifted the latch and the door's mechanism kicked in, Sora finally noticed. He noticed the white hands wrapped around Riku's trousered ankles, and the tip of a head peering through the boy's open legs. He didn't even have time to utter a sound of protest before Riku spoke barely above a whisper.

"It's been fun. Gotta' go." And then the ground itself opened up and swallowed him whole.

AN: Ignore that first bit. I hate it. IhateitIhateitIhateit.

This chapter is just _blah blah blah_ and then something happened _moan bitch (_Attempt at poetic stuff_) feelings and angst._ You guys get that impression? But hey, it's up now, and it's long. (5500 words!) Please leave a comment in the box. XD DESPITE THIS CHAPTER BEING COMPLETE SHIT.

OOH, also I re-wrote the first four chapters a little. Just a bit, because after playing the game a realised just how fanon I'd written them and wanted them more in character. No plot has changed though. It probably isn't enough to bother re-reading.


	6. Kiss Yourself Goodnight

A/N: Thanks so much for all of your responses! Seriously, I got some lovely comments. Sorry for so long without an update; I was working seven days a week with coursework on top. Not a fun three months.

Just so you know, a month after I write every chapter I go back and revise it with a new perspective, so if you ever find yourself confused at something, (firstly, mention it to me!), then if you've got the time or patience head back and re-read. Especially the last chapter. There's lots of vague bits in there that I can already see need changing. xD

Thanks to: Axel's Ashes; for being amazing and a real help, and to Mare for being totally inspirational and offering to beta this piece of crap!

Also to Sorakun4ever , Panda's Forever Yeah, Smiley Smackdown, OceanFae, NightmareFairy, psalmofsummer, sad kuroneko, Yunie Tatlin, yasu-yasu, PhinMaginONLY and Shade of Euphoria for your comments. You people are LOVE. XD I hope I got everybody…

Disclaimer: I don't own. And I didn't steal the well from The Ring, I swear! xD (You know I haven't seen it, and yet I know the whole plot. Oh high school, you ruin so many movies) It's actually a major part of the original Okiku ghost story. Much to my chagrin.

**Remains - UNEDITED  
**

Chapter 6 – Kiss Yourself Goodnight - Now with added Cleon.

Even as he felt Riku's fingers slacken their hold on his hand, the grip still pulled Sora to the floor as the silver-haired boy was dragged away from him. The wet linoleum slapped him, hard, unforgiving. Dead.

As he pushed himself up numbly, he caught sight of Leon's reflection in the water soaking through his clothes. The man had stopped, static and lifeless in the silence that had seized them all. His face was blank.

It was like he'd just shut down.

Ignoring the shaking that coursed through his straining arms, Sora got up and swayed. Kairi trembled slightly beside him, eyes latched on the spot where Riku disappeared and ignoring Sora's drunken staggering. When she spoke, her sandpaper throat made her voice tiny and next to a whisper.

"What…What now?"

No-one answered. Instead a fat bubble formed itself in the puddle before them, reflecting a distorted version of Sora's face back at him. He watched it swirl. Colours fought for space on its smooth surface, until with a lazy plop it burst.

Simultaneously all the televisions and computer monitors turned to white noise.

"_Seven…"_

"What the fuck!" Demyx snapped, screaming. "Give him back! Give him back!" The television nearest them melted back into an image of Her; wide, black eyes and a tangle of snakes for hair. In a fit of strength Demyx ran forward and heaved the T.V off the shelf. It fell the short distance to the linoleum floor and smashed in a spray of plastic and glass, cables ripped out of its back like nerves. Kairi tried to calm him but only succeeded in crashing into Leon. Her fall startled him back into action, and he grabbed hold of the incensed musician and pinned his arms until the wild struggle began to die down. The screaming stopped and Demyx's confident protests collapsed. "What do you want? I'll give you anything…anything."

Behind him, Leon changed the grip into an awkward, restraining embrace, looking for all the world like he wanted to find comfort in Demyx's grief but finding himself unable to.

The television on the floor let out a savage spark, fizzling into non-existence. Its brethren around the room went blank.

"_Eight…"_

The projector at the back stopped advertising the uses of an external hard-drive and changed to the image of a stone well. Kairi groaned.

"Tell me Sora, for the love of God, that you did not watch a cursed video tape?" Before anyone could answer, the computer beside her that was off switched on with the unmistakable jingle that all computers played, making her yelp in surprise. Its screen was immediately eaten by the same image as the projector.

Around them merchandise turned itself on, and boxes lit up with blue light as their innards turned on without power. The familiar jingle travelled around the shop like an echo as every screen acquired its own well. Only when every screen was displayed the same, static picture did the jingles end.

They all watched silently as the view changed to a shelf of plates. A beautiful woman was taking them off the shelf carefully, and wrapping them up in paper to box them up. She worked carefully around her ornate, long sleeves, legs tucked under her and traditional wooden sandals on her feet. Her long black hair was half up in a lavish display of jewels and pearls.

Suddenly she stopped and turned. A dark figure was in the doorway. He seemed to be speaking but the screens stubbornly refused to allow the trapped people behind the glass any sound. The woman knelt down shakily, dainty hands clenching and unclenching. As she pulled out each finely crafted plate, she said one word.

"Ichi." Sora said over her silent lips. Another plate. "Nii." Kairi lifted a hand to Sora's shoulder despite the magnetism of the screens around her. She didn't understand what he was saying. "San." She shook him and he stopped, looking at her blankly. Apparently he didn't know what he was saying either. The shots came faster on the screen, each plate in turn being wrenched from its warm prison in the box. The woman was frantic, counting each porcelain plate while the figure stood, unmoving. Finally, only one plate was left. She pulled it out, disbelief spread across her features, and then she threw back her head and screamed silently.

"_Nine…" _

Sound filled the room. Screeches and wails and crying. Wind shook the shelves and rattled the televisions, hurtling towards Kairi. She stood, knees together and hands to her face as the unseen force propelled itself towards her. At the last moment it took a diversion leaving its wind to ruffle her skirt. Instead it slammed into Sora at her side, sending him flying back into a shelf of DVD players which toppled on top of him in a deadly technological avalanche.

On every screen cryptic font displayed one message.

"_You want her, but you shall not harm her. You. Want. Her."_

X

Riku woke up slowly. His mind was clogged with cold, and his fingers and toes stung in the frigid air. As he moved, ice around him cracked and skittered, making him slip as he tried to get up. Underneath the ice the eternal stream continued onwards, not stopped but simply hindered, made sluggish by the arctic frost.

He sat up and looked around. Back to this place. Back to darkness, cold, fear and loneliness.

No closer to helping Sora.

He lifted one hand –frozen like butchers' meat- and touched an eye. Cloth kissed his fingertips.

No closer to helping himself either.

He stood slowly, working creaky limbs back into body parts that worked. Around him was only air and water; the stones of the well probably as far away from him as She could make them. Sure, she'd dropped him somewhere he couldn't damage her plans any further, but the biggest question in Riku's mind was '_why the hell am I not dead yet?_'

Picking a direction at random he began to walk, splashing sloppily through the streaming current and slamming the ice-lumps that passed as his hands deep into his pockets. His fingers closed around several blocks crackling amongst the lint. He pulled out the bars, halfway between melting and frozen in their dizzying journey from normalcy into Riku's personal purgatory, and thought of home.

Reopening old wounds hurts more than the infliction of new ones, and crying over chocolate doesn't solve a thing.

X

The car was a wreck. Rusted and creaking with seats covered in stains and makeshift patches, it crawled along roads as though its very bolts were rebelling. Behind the wheel a disgruntled blond glared at surrounding traffic.

'Disgruntled' was almost a default expression of Cloud's, but there inside the barely-mobile box car his frown seemed more pronounced, the creases on his forehead deeper. There were few things that could have an affect this prominent on him, but they unfortunately included his younger brothers. They mostly included just one younger brother, actually, since trouble seemed to stalk him.

He'd just reached the outskirts of Sora's town, signs asking him to please drive slowly and enjoy his stay whisking past in a flash of giant pearly smiles. Sora didn't have his phone, which agitated Cloud, but then Sora never had his phone. The problem was that Kairi wasn't answering either, and last thing Cloud had heard was some babbling from his sibling about supernatural beings and a stranger with the ridiculous name of Leon Leonhart, or something. Cloud bet he could guess the guy's middle name in three goes, given the chance.

He scrolled down the menu of his phone, dispassionate about the fact it halved the amount of attention he placed on the road, and selected Kairi again. He called, it rang.

And it rang.

"Hello?" A very quiet voice and certainly not Kairi's, but a voice none the less. After almost nine hours of calling, during which he'd decided just to go down and question them himself, any voice was welcome.

"Who's this?"

"Kairi's sleeping. I'm a…friend. Leon." Except, perhaps, that voice.

"She'd better be just sleeping. I want to talk to her, now." Cloud demanded.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means, '_Leon_,' that I don't trust you. And, after my little brother turns out to be at your house admitting he doesn't know you, ignores my calls and his best friend –who is, by the way, a seventeen year old girl who would trust _anyone_- is apparently sleeping with you, I'm seriously considering calling the police on your ass. I'll be there in _ten minutes_ Lionhart, and if you've touched one hair on either of their heads it'll be iron bars, orange jump suits and fun-time in the showers for the rest of your life."

"…You're trying to call me a pervert?"

"We have a winner."

"Well just who the fuck are you?" The line exploded back at him.

"Sora's brother, asswipe, and I swear if you don't put me on to Kairi I'll-"

"Brother?" The tone changed abruptly, anger discarded. "You phoned before. It's good you're coming." Cloud was floored by the sudden change in conversation and gaped for a moment. He almost missed it when Leon reeled off an address where he could find Sora, and swerved at Leon's parting comment.

"And I'm not sure what you do in your spare time, 'Sora's Brother', but I _really_ don't need to know about your orange-jump-suit fetishes." He hung up and the dial tone bleeped happily at him.

_Asshole._ Cloud thought.

X

There was really nowhere to go. Thoughts of the flat, of Kairi's flat, of Leon's empty home were stale with the knowledge that, actually, there wasn't one place on Earth that would stop the fear pumping blood through their hearts. Sora knew he wouldn't be able to sleep. He could barely breathe.

His fingertips were icy, and as his bare feet rubbed against his calves he finally understood what the dead must feel like. The cold of his feet seemed to suck the warmth out of his upper leg.

Corpses were colder than the air around them.

It had been Kairi who marched them all out of the decimated electronics store. They'd followed blindly as she'd led them through the streets chattering about where to go, and what next, and should they pick up some food? Chasing away the shadows with mindless talk. Not talking about Riku. Never about Riku.

They'd ended up in a church. A local one, with open doors and nothing of any value inside to deter thieves. Only candles and an alter and a thick, old, wooden crucifix surrounding the plain pews.

As she mothered them, arranging pews together for beds and moving candles into a circle around them, Sora was shocked at how happy he was to have her. Not happy to love her, or watch her graceful movements, but just to be blessed by her _being._ Happy that, of all the people in the world, he'd ended up with her as a best friend.

It was during his musings that Leon dropped his battered rucksack on the floor. All the worse for wear having endured rain and sleet and attacks from the undead, but still in tact. Out of this came the tiny plectrum on a string, followed by the battered notebook covered in doodles of psychiatrists hung from nooses and tallies that only ever went up to nine. He opened it and laid it on a pew, standing a singular pale candle in a pool of wax that he poured onto the splintering wood. Fingering the pages, sweeping over lines of text both carefully written and fearfully scrawled, he seemed to settle on one page. This he took to Demyx.

"See, here." He ordered the shell-shocked musician quietly. The boy barely glanced up, and then shrugged his shoulders in a movement that took all of his body just to roll through his joints. "He writes about the well. He writes about the plates. 'Nine plates in total. They seem to be important, or at least valuable. The tenth is always missing.' And further down he connects it with Her obsession with braking all of the china. Do you see?" Demyx begrudgingly nodded. "You searched for months about legends and folklore, tell me, _tell me_ your search yielded _something_." Demyx shrugged again and sighed.

"Nothing. No plates, no wells, no mirrors. From her…" He stopped for a moment, throat suddenly dry. "From her appearance I'd call her a yurei, that is, a Japanese ghost. An Onry**ō, ah, they all look the same. White kimono, long black hair, purply-whitish face. They're vengeful, and tend to haunt lovers or husbands that have done them wrong." He lapsed into silence.** "**That's all you know." Leon stated, and Demyx nodded slowly.** "**But Riku's never even **_**been**_** to Japan, only here in Hollow Bastion and the only person he ever even looked at twice was Namine, so he couldn't-" Kairi's phone cut him off, thrumming in the rucksack along to its tinny ringtone as it vibrated its shrill little heartbeat. ** "**It's all we have." He plucked the phone from the bag and turned to Kairi and Sora. They were asleep, heads on one-another's shoulders curled in the corner of a pew. Thinking, perhaps, that Kairi's parents may be wondering where she was, he resolved to break tradition and answer the phone. "Re-read everything and keep an eye on them, Try and match it with what we saw at the store. I'm not giving up this time, now that we've seen he's still here I'm not going to roll over and let her have him." Accept call. "Hello?...Kairi's sleeping…"** **X**

That had been fifteen minutes previously, and now he was speeding back to his flat with promises having been wrung from Demyx that he would stay away and explain to the others where Leon had run off to.

This was his chance. Sora's brother, an ally of sorts to confide in, chide with. He could help this fellow sibling spend the last days he could with Sora, since Riku had promised this vengeful spirit was after the cheerful brunette as well.

Ah, that was morbid of him.

But true.

He could help this brother avoid all the sleepless nights of 'if only I'd believe him' and 'I wish to God those last weeks weren't spent fighting…', he could save someone else the heartache of being painfully useless when it came to crunch time.

He hadn't woken Sora to tell him his brother was coming, he didn't want him to force his brother away like he had that first day they'd met. And maybe it would do them all some good to have someone look at the situation from outside the box. From outside the constant terror.

There was a fairly tall blond barraging his front door when he pulled into the weed-invaded drive. Slightly effeminate in colour, face and build, but not at all in his attitude or the fiercely aggressive stance he fell into as Leon opened his car door.

"Where is Sora?" The blond demanded.

"At a church not far from here. I'll drive you."

"Oh that's _rich_. I've seen his apartment, what did you do? Trash it for fun after you whisked him off to 'church'?"

"When he's explained what's going on right now, you'll understand he has more to worry about than the state of his apartment. Get in."

"So you can dump me in a ditch?"

"I will if you don't shut up and get in the goddamn car."

"Just give me directions and I'll go there myself, _Lionhart._"

"It's Leonhart, and I don't care what you do. Drive there, ride a camel, but for God's sake shut up and _get in a car!_" So much for allies, Leon thought. But then he noticed the blond's hands shaking and the eyes that glinted in a steely resolution never to cry, even in the face of this. "Look, I'm sorry. Sora's fine, he's with Kairi and they're sleeping. You can follow me in your car, if you like."

Cloud calmed slightly, but still had every nerve on edge. He gave a terse nod and slipped into the little car parked askew on the paving. Leon climbed back into his own and they drove back down the path he'd just taken, isolated in a bubble of silent solitude.

X

Before Cloud and Leon poured through the doors of the church throwing abuse at each other like so many snowballs, Sora had woken up and spotted Demyx highlighted by what looked like thousands of dancing flames. His head was bowed over Riku's journal like a studying monk, and the sparks glittered, shards in his eyes.

"Are you okay?" The mohawked boy looked up.

"Yeah." He rasped. "Are you?"

"…No."

"I see." They lapsed into silence. "You…get numb to it, after a while. Lose yourself in other things, not because you don't love him, but because you just can't live constantly shitting yourself, you know? Sometimes I don't even feel scared anymore. She's like taxes, or an overdue assignment, or…you know, just annoying stuff that happens and stops you smiling for a moment."

"How long…did it take for you to get like that? How long before you went numb?" Sora asked, face in shadow and only his nose and cheekbones in any useful light. They talked in the lowest of whispers, leaving Kairi to slumber on.

"A long time. A long time after Riku went into care, a long time again when I saw Her for the first time, an even longer time after he disappeared…self preservation just stops."

"Are you numb enough not to care he's…gone again?" Demyx closed his eyes.

"Never."

"Never, huh. Then, this feeling in my chest isn't going to go away soon then."

"Probably not."

The wax dripped and Demyx turned a page. When he next spoke, it was barely audible at all.

"You can never tell another guy you love him 'till he's dead. You never really realise how much it's true when they're alive." Sora had nothing to say to that. He thought of Tidus though, and how he'd never really considered losing a close friend. He didn't like it, thinking about death, so he pointed at a doodle amongst Riku's scribbles.

"That looks like the well."

"Yeah. Riku knew parts of the story. I…didn't think to ask if he'd learned any more." _Since he'd been locked up with her._

"All I remember is plates, and Japan, and saying some weird words I didn't understand…"

"The Japanese alphabet." Demyx shrugged. "You were counting. I'll bet you were trying to get to nine."

"Nine plates?"  
"Ten."

"Why?" Demyx stopped short. Why? Why only nine plates when there should be ten? China sets came in even numbers. China. Expensive, valuable china…What do you do with expensive China?

"…Well maybe if you didn't drive like a drunk I might have avoided your bumper!"

"Oh, I'm sorry if catching your psychotic glare in my wing mirror made me brake a little more sharply at that light."

"If you'd have been driving like a sane person I wouldn't have been glaring, now would I?"

"Cloud?"

Silence. The blond now known to Leon as 'Cloud' whipped his head round to peer into the gloom, unnaturally blue eyes lighting on a head of spiky brown hair.

"Sora?" He breathed, as though all the half-jokes about kidnaps and rapes were indeed half jokes, and he'd really believed somewhere along the line his little brother _had_ been lost. A blur of white and brown and Sora was shaking in Cloud's arms.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Sora demanded, but it lacked conviction and the blocked-nose sound of oncoming tears made it very unconvincing. "I thought I told you to stay in Twilight Town with Roxy."

"Roxas is fine on his own; he's staying with Axel. I was more worried about _you_, leaving me on the end of a phone line after babbling nonsense and then disappearing for a week…" Cloud stepped back and looked on his brother for a moment, and then sharply cuffed him round the head. "Seriously Sora, you had me thinking you'd been molested by this hippy-haired road-rager, and Roxas swore you were in trouble. You know how he gets when he feels that connection between you; I had to force him to school and he wouldn't even sleep."

Sora was chastened. Roxas was that worried? And the fact that Cloud knew Roxas wasn't sleeping meant that he'd been up too, unable to rest. Worrying.

He threw himself back into Cloud's arms with a 'sorry' muffled in the blond's black polo-neck. Cloud smelled like home and musk and young man, and even when he batted at Sora in agitation, he eventually relented and held the boy loosely, unable to leave Sora uncomforted in the face of the terrified vice-like grip of Sora's clingy hug.

Kairi stirred.

Leon only watched from the doorway,

and Demyx looked away.

A/N: I know it took forever, but it's here now. Done, and done. And still need something to fill the void between now and the stuff that is already planned but can't happen till later unless I want this story rushed. DX

Thanks for reading, despite the massive update gap! x


	7. Cause There's A Killer

A/N: SNO-O-O-WOW! Snow is falling. It's 11:54pm now, and I'm _really_ hoping it'll settle overnight and make England have an aneurism (and make my school close).

Thanks to OceanFae, Panda's Forever Yeah, (Who've been reviewing for, like, forever. Hugs all round), ^RiSora_fan^, High Elf, Yunie Tatlin, Whirlwind and Staple Queen

But _mostly_ to Mare and iShiznitch, for being totally awesome and making me feel like a million bucks! Sorry for the long space between updates. But it is over 7000 words (my longest chapter on anything, EVAR) so hopefully that makes up for it. Might be another wait for the next one though, because exam season is here! Woo. Kill me now.

**Remains **

Chapter 7 - 'Cause There's A Killer

All but two of the group in the church were asleep in makeshift beds. Cloud had pulled the sleeping bag out of his car and unzipped it to drape over Sora and Kairi who, after much persuasion, had finally agreed to settle down and sleep with Leon on first watch. Demyx was top to toe with Sora, spiky hair tickling his feet and thick, itchy church blanket cocooned around him. That left Leon with their new arrival, Cloud, and the momentous task of explaining just what it was they were doing to him.

"You know," Cloud said, "I think I've seen that movie."

"If you want to know so damn badly what's going on here, you'll shut up and listen." Leon growled, patience burning low.

"But you're spinning _bull_, Leonhart! I'm going to be honest, okay, even though I don't know you and really don't like you, I'm going to give you the truth. I don't believe in ghosts. I don't even believe in God; what I believe in is humanity and impressionable kids. So, naturally, I'm not buying your story. Right now, I'm just really worried about a brother I love. As the only adult here, I'm asking you; why are these three holed up in a drafty church in the middle of nowhere?" Cloud hissed. Leon made to reply, but then sighed and reached around to his back pocket.

He pulled out a worn leather wallet, and opened it up to run the tips of his fingers over something inside.

"I…have a younger brother too, you know." Cloud was silent and Leon turned the wallet round to show him a picture of a boy inside the plastic coverlet. "He's called Riku, and he's maybe a few months, almost a year older than Sora. He was declared medically insane a few months ago." Cloud considered him thoughtfully, wary of tricks, before realising it would be insensitive even for him to be rude to Leon about this particular subject. He sighed.

"I'm sorry. He looks like a good kid."

"Thanks, and he is, but that's not what I wanted to tell you. He's not insane. I thought he was, for the longest time, but…When we got him into counselling, the psychiatrist told us he was totally sound apart from the visions he had. He'd been talking about ghosts and hauntings…And stuff was getting smashed up around the house. I just thought it was attention seeking, a belated reaction to our parent's divorce maybe. Drugs even, but when stuff started happening around the house while he was in hospital…well, I couldn't blame him for that, could I?" Cloud sighed.

"Is that a trick question? I'm not going to say he came home and started ruining stuff, but I can't believe you either."

"He's been missing for two months."

"I…What?"

"And with Sora's help we got him back, but She took him again."

"Oh, come on!"

"And now She's after Sora too-"  
"You're telling me my little brother's going to be kidnapped by a _ghost-"_

"_Yes, I am!_ Alright, alright! We'll do it your way. You don't believe this, but I do, and Sora definitely does. If it isn't real, if everything's in our heads, then we've convinced ourselves too completely to just break away from it now. Unless we see it through, it could develop into paranoia or anything. The way I see it, your only option is to stick by his side and help him overcome these obstacles; that way if it's all imagination he'll be able to move on. And if everything is true, and I know part of you is considering that option right now because I did too, then you can't afford to take the chance and leave now." Leon took in one more deep breath and then slumped, conviction gone. Thoughts ran around Cloud's head. Was this man replacing his missing brother with Sora? Was he unable to let go of his brother who was, in all likelihood, dead after two months?

When Sora was in potential danger, did it matter? Always questions, he was getting sick of them. The only answers he ever got from Leon were fairytales…but, the biggest 'but' there could be, he was right about just breaking away. If Sora believed, really, truly _believed_, then ignoring him and calling him a liar would only alienate him. Fairytales with a deadly edge then. Ridiculous, mind-warping lies, and it was so hard to tell them from the truth when he was surrounded by believers.

Cloud had always supported Sora and Roxas before…With whatever new game or trouble they got into, he had always cleaned up the scraped knees and ended the nightmare with an awkward half hug.

He would continue now.

"Fine." He bit out. "I'll help you. We can do exorcisms and search the streets for Riku and buy a Ouija board, whatever, but this is for Sora. It goes no further than here, now and whatever he thinks is going on, okay?"

"Sure." Leon replied, the word coming out on a wave of air as he sighed in relief. Cloud was perplexed; this man, strong, proud from the looks of things, probably just as stubborn if not more so than he, seemed so overjoyed to have his co-operation. When Leon smiled, a feeling of wrongness swept through him. Whatever was going on here, even if he did refuse to believe it was ghosts, was bigger than the monsters in the closet.

X

The next day was as overcast as the first, but no-one dwelled on the troubles of yesterdays. Thanks to Cloud and his pragmatics, they were shuffling through the supermarket, plastic bags filled with clothes and food. No-one had wanted to leave the church after having a night free of Her presence, despite Cloud who had wanted to check into a hotel, and Cloud's plans had been thwarted by a four to one vote.

"Now we need food, and a gas burner at least. Oh, is there a toilet in the church?"

"Yes." Leon supplied.

"Then we will need toilet paper. Leon, Demyx, come with me. Kairi and Sora can go get some canned food. Real food. No stocking up on junk like chocolate."

"Yes mother." Cloud glared at Leon as he smirked infuriatingly. Demyx snorted.

"If we're doing this we're doing it properly, so shove it Leonhart. Don't split up, back here at three."

"Leon!" Sora suddenly said. "Shouldn't we get a mirror?" Cloud raised an eyebrow, but the brunette beside him only nodded. "Okay, I'll find a cheap one, don't kill each other while we're gone!" He ordered, and grabbed Kairi's hand to drag her down an aisle.

"It's weird. I can't feel scared in a supermarket." Kairi admitted.

"Don't let your guard down, She might jump out of an Evian bottle." Sora replied with a grin. Housewife-mums with screaming children and college kids buying lunch made it hard to call up the bone-chilling fear that had invaded their hearts over their days of torment. Sora's soul was sick of jumping from one emotion to another, but he supposed he couldn't help it.

As Kairi plucked her way through the reduced, out-of-shape cans, Sora wandered close by. The clothes section caught his eye, in particular the mirror there. Full length, shining in the electric lights and sunlight through the windows, it beckoned him. He tenderly placed his fingertips against the cool glass, and rested there for a moment, searching the expanse of reflections with his blue eyes.

"Come on Riku, I'm here." He tapped his nails against the glass and searched it again, trying to reach out or something…just calling to Riku in the hopes he would hear and come. So that he could…what? Fall out of the mirror into the frozen meat section?

They'd only get thrown out for breaking the shop's mirror anyway.

It didn't make the ache inside ebb any though. He still wanted Riku there, solid again. Riku represented freedom; he was a boy he wanted to help, he was someone who promised to be a friend, he was what Sora could one day become.

Which prompted the question, if they couldn't save Riku, could they ever save him?

"Hey Kairi!" Sora called, walking back to her side. "If I'm the next victim after Riku, then there was probably someone before him too, right?" The redhead mulled this over for a moment.

"Yeah, I guess there should be."

"And since She's wearing such old stuff, she's probably been around a while."

"Yeah…"

"Then maybe there have been hundreds, thousands of victims for years and years…"

"Sora, what's your point?"

"There's got to be evidence! People have to have found out more about her before us. Maybe there are answers out there, we just have to look!" Her eyes shone with understanding at Sora's revelation. Surely there were records like Riku's diary, written by people stalked by death. She nodded at the brunette beside her, her heart lifting infinitesimally at the purpose that filled his voice. It was so good to hear Sora speak of aims again, instead of lapsing further into unreachable silence, cocooned in his fear. "Let's go pay, and give me your phone so I can call Cloud. I'm sure we'll find something. There's got to be stuff out there..." As he babbled on, Kairi began to wonder if this frenzied excitement would eventually die out, and her mind wandered to grim things.

Grim, like if Riku became a lost cause, would they lose Sora to his own grief?

And grimmer still; if Sora was stolen away like Riku, could she bring herself carry on like Leon and Demyx?

Her heart wasn't sure it could muster the strength to live without him.

X

Riku knew She was there before She touched him. The air changed, every hair stood on end, his heart beat so fast it ripped out his organs like carrots and ran with them up his throat.

He tried to calm himself, thinking of all the times She'd come to torment him before. He wasn't dead yet, she hadn't hurt him per se, only...

_Drowningcan'tbreathe…need__**air**__can'tbreathe…can'tmove…__**legshurt**__shouldershurt…__**can'tbreathe**__can'tbreathe!_

His hair rose like a cloud of smoke around his head, water singing in his ears. Marble fingers clawing at his neck, holding him down and under, immovable under his slippery grip. Lungs burned with fiery survival. He kicked and writhed, each movement taking so much effort but still remaining sluggish. Useless.

And then it was gone. Water streamed from the sopping blindfold, air rushed into his lungs dragging needles down in its rush. Just as every time before.

He couldn't count the amount of times he'd been soaked out of his thoughts, but Riku still shivered and wheezed each time. The drownings, as he'd come to call them, had started a few days after he'd been first entombed in his watery prison. Small at first; a rush of water over his head, or being suddenly pushed forward, face-down in the river. Tiny brushes with death.

Slowly though, She began to push him deeper under and eventually held him in place, only letting him jerk up for air at the moment unconsciousness threatened to spill into being. Each time longer until now, when every time he felt the water close over his head Riku wondered if he'd ever break the surface again.

"What…what is it that you want? What do you want to tell me?" He rasped at the dark air around him. Nothing.

And then spidery legs and arms scuttling up his body, that stone grip digging into his flesh and her pewter fish-lips at his cheek.

"_One…"_

Riku shrieked and threw himself backwards. She fell with him, both of them landing in the water as her hair snaked around him like black threads of fate until it was torn from his skin as she spirited herself away. He lay in the water, currents faintly tugging at his hair and clothes, trying to drag his hands downstream.

As his mind was lulled, he could have been dead or he could have been simply dreaming.

X

Cloud pulled various toiletries off the shelf, placing them in a basket hanging from the junction of his elbow. Behind him, Leon studied Cloud's back. He noted the absurdity of a grown man acting like his mother, or at least the mother normal men had, but said nothing, thinking it was more absurd for him to be _watching_ said man like some voyeur.

If he was honest with himself, he was worried. That was the only reason his eyes followed the broad shoulders of the blond as he moved through shelves of food. So powerful. Self assured. He'd been like that too, once upon a time.

Demyx took his arm, wide eyes levelling with him, musicians' fingers light on his jacket.

"What are you thinking?" He asked. Leon grunted.

"Maybe I was wrong." The brunet acquiesced quietly.

"About him or about you?"

"Both." Demyx sighed and took his hand from Leon's arm.

"It's better. Being on the inside, I mean. Knowing. It hurt more to be on the outside, not understanding at all."

"He doesn't want to understand, though." Leon sighed. "I'm just hurting more people by leading Cloud here. Sora didn't want it, and I should have respected that."

"You needed some help. We understand that. I know you can't be Mr. Silent-Leader-Rock all he time; you need someone to lean on sometimes too." Leon looked defensive for a moment. But he was kidding himself, and he knew it, when he said he didn't need anyone. It would be a lie to say that he hadn't, somewhere within him, wanted comfort from someone else in his situation.

"You're right. But that doesn't make it right to put a stranger in that position. It's not fair of me to pin all my hopes and fears on him."  
"Alright, but remember Riku wanted _you_ there. He told me more than once, and I'm sure Sora is the same, okay? They have each other to get through this now. That's your Good Samaritan deed done. And if you just happen to make a friend in the process, I promise I won't go pointing fingers yelling cheat." The corners of Leon's mouth twitched upwards, but the guilty look in his eyes only lifted when fear replaced it.

Looking behind him, Demyx saw only Cloud for a moment. But then his eyes fell on a gap between cans on the shelf, and the singular eyeball in a socket of pallid grey that glared accusingly through the tiny fissure. He sucked in a breath.

Turning, Cloud felt his heart beat rise at the sight of the two of them. Their gazes were over his shoulder, muscles taught, fear radiating between them.

"What is it?" He moved to twist around and look at whatever had them in clutches of terror, but Leon stopped him with a strong, warm grip on his arm and a small utterance of 'nothing'. Instead of shrugging him off and turning defiantly to look at what it was that had them so seemingly captivated, Cloud let himself be lead towards the checkout. He didn't want to be sucked into their game. It was a ruse to make him scared, to pull his mind into the same whirlpool of fear they'd walked into themselves. If he ignored it, perhaps he'd be the one to keep his mind and lead them back to reality.

X

The church was looking more homely when they were done. Pews had the blankets they'd found carefully arranged on them to form a row of beds on one side, and they'd managed to find a table in a little room which they dragged to the newly made empty space. Sora crouched by a crumbling Christening font, artfully arranging the mirror to rest against its roughly carved stone. Once done, he sat himself down in front of it and settled in to wait.

His eyes roved the surface of the mirror, only an arm's length of reflective glass. One tiny chip nestled in a corner, but the otherwise flawless surface just looked back at him, impassive.

He decided, this time, he'd really try.

Crossing his legs under him in a childish manner, Sora rested his hands on his knees and took a deep breath.

"Riku, are you there?" The silence was heavy for a few tense moments, and then he sighed. "Riku? Please, we need your help." He knocked on the glass, a hollow rattling that somehow sounded like a rumble of thunder in an enormous cavern. The raps that had evolved into booms travelled from the other side of the glass outwards in a wave across the world of water and black, and although Sora couldn't see it, reached his target.

Riku had intended on just sitting in the frigid water, rocking back and forth with the chocolate bar clutched to his chest, until he died one way or another. He'd known he was doomed to return here. He'd never expected for a second to be left alone in the light…Well, perhaps a moment. One traitorous minute where he'd had the audacity to hope he might be released. Was that moment enough to break his resolve so thoroughly?

Before they'd found him, as his family were reluctantly but surely giving up on him and his ties with the world were being gradually broken, he'd accepted death like an upcoming holiday. Before that day he'd faced Her with icy venom and sarcasm, with only the tiniest box of fear locked inside him that was never shown, ever. Before that day. Before Sora.

But now one taste of freedom, one tender touch from a white rabbit who'd managed to find the rabbit hole and he was _weak_ again. Soft. He was back to patching up the holes in his soul and running from bumps in the dark. When was he going to go back to accepting that the bumps were never going to stop and that the darkness stretched on forever? _How_ could he have let himself go back to terror, terror, screams and blood-curdling shrieks that served as the soundtrack to his inescapable nightmare?

He should never have taken the title of 'home' away from this god-forsaken place.

The minute he recognised his real home as a place he belonged, he'd only wanted to go back there and lapse into his most childish of desires; hugs and hot water bottles and sharing duvets with Leon who'd left the hall light on to scare away the shadows. The moment that was acknowledged, this parallel horror-world was abnormal once again, and his mind would not accept that it should settle there.

Riku's monologue of self-loathing was forcefully broken by a light that pierced both his blindfold and his eyelids, and although he ignored it in favour of courting ideas of death, it was a persistent little light.

When he finally lifted his head, he saw a rectangle of muted light, like daylight filtered through clumps of cold clouds. It flickered at him, invitingly, and then in a blink was gone. Riku searched for it again, but nothing appeared in the spot he'd seen it; not even a pinprick. Instead, two more popped up behind him, shimmering genially. Getting up, muscles stiff and head muggy, he headed towards the lights with a dangerous lack of fear. Just as he was about to reach them, they too disappeared. But then a row, one appearing as another vanished, leading like a path away from him. He chased it, finally breaking into a run. The water splashed up in liquid crowns at his feet. Once again, they began to fade as he reached them. But he caught it; the back of an explosive head of honey-brown hair and mucky yellow trainers. Sora.

The next window was another shape, oval really. And as more and more popped up in contrasting shapes Riku realised they were all reflecting his charge, and that he was seeing Sora through mirrors, just as Sora had seen him. The difference being that there _were_ no mirrors in Riku's world.

He had thought the only way to see Sora was at the bottom of the now-elusive well, and so at first he was set into motion by a renewed energy, running towards each light he saw. It tired him out quickly, as Sora was simply walking past most of them and they disappeared within seconds. Windows, shop displays and such.

He'd almost caught him once, in a full-length rectangle that cast Sora into sharp relief against the surrounding dark. His living beauty thrown into the shadowy space for a few minutes, where Riku caught sight of railings of clothes in the background. Cupid-bow lips moved, but he was too far away to hear anything, and just as he reached it Sora turned a corner and the rectangle was gone.

Riku had sat down after that. He was tired, and content for that time just to sit and catch glimpses of what he could through the windows.

And then came the resounding booms. He searched, the windows having become less and less frequent, and eventually picked it out from the dark. It was far away, made small by distance, but Sora's form was easily made out, sat on just the other side of it. Riku walked, then ran. It was like every clichéd nightmare, where his legs were moving through treacle while the rest of the world carried on full-speed. He couldn't seem to make them go any faster, despite how hard he tried.

"-e need you." He heard Sora's voice as he neared. Just a little further.

"Sora, if you're right we need to-…-net café or something to look it up." More voices, one he didn't know. They had help, he thought. Yes! They were getting somewhere, damnit! "…Should get a move on now."

"What? No! No, stay there, stay where I can see you. I'll be there in a minute, I swear. Just twenty seconds, please give me twenty seconds…!"

"Alright then." Sora sighed and shifted to get up. Riku could only see the boy's calves and shoes, tanned hands brushing down his trousers.

"No! Sora, for God's sake just _wait_. Don't go! Don't-!" But Sora was walking away towards oak doors, and he could see Kairi and Demyx following. There on the steps was Leon with the owner of the new voice he'd heard. He gripped the edge of the window, falling to kneel before it. "Wait!" He cried at the reverse mirror, clutching it tightly, but the door closed on them and the mirror went with it.

Having lost their surface, his hands fell and Riku slumped forward. Gone, gone. But they would come back, right? They had to. They wouldn't leave him.

He'd stay then. Like a faithful dog he'd stay and watch the space where his supernatural television had been only moments before.

As Sora pulled away from the mirror, he felt his metaphorical heart strings tighten, leaving the poor organ in front of the looking glass even as his body walked away. Sunshine was fighting a losing battle against the clouds, but when the rays finally hit his skin he barely felt them. He didn't say goodbye to Leon and Demyx as they split off, and he didn't say anything to Cloud or Kairi in the car, because he felt it. One tiny thread of connection. And if he was dreaming it up then he was insane and conversation was pointless anyway.

Every reflective surface felt like it held limitless possibilities, open to his touch but for the moment jammed, and likely to close like an angry clam the moment he let his concentration waver. Millions of doors leading anywhere. The only problem he had was that the surfaces around him weren't reflective enough, and so he had to use every reserve of strength to keep the feeling with him, staring into the swirling reflections on the car window. He wasn't going to lose Riku over a few ephemeral words.

The car stopped.

In front of him, his brother and best friend opened their car doors and stepped out onto the pavement. Before them was the looming form of the library, and for a moment they both started towards it without him. Of course, Cloud turned back. He always did.

"Sora?" He asked, but found himself met with silence. The young brunet was sat stiffly in the back seat, one hand accidently brushing patterns in the condensation on the window. Cloud knew that look; it was the same look Sora got when revising, or trying to find the right words to say to get out of trouble. "Want to talk about it?" Sora's head shook and his hair bounced half-heartedly. "Want to…wait here?" A nod, slightly more enthusiastic. "Alright…Kairi and I will be inside. My phone's on. Don't…go anywhere, okay?" Cloud didn't expand the meaning behind his words, but Sora got it anyway. _Don't leave, don't get taken, stay with me. I love you. _

Then they were gone, and he was alone in the quickly cooling car with a window for company.

X

Demyx didn't like being surrounded by screens after the incident at Moogle Electronics, but Leon's chair walled him into the little cubical as around him monitors whirred and clunked. Open on the countertop lay Riku's journal among a notebook and scattered pens, pages fraying and ink smudged. Coffee and chatter filled the living air. Leon crossed out another key word from the notebook's lined pages and sighed.

"Nothing's coming up. Every time I search anything to do with wells or ghosts I get a load of Japanese horror movies and Lara Croft websites." He pushed the keyboard away and pinched the bridge of his nose, creasing the line of scar tissue like an unhappy frown.

"There has to be _something_. Sora's right; there has to have been people before Riku. And if I know anything about the internet, then someone somewhere will have put it in a blog. C'mere." Grabbing the keyboard, he leaned over Leon to study the journal. "We haven't put in 'plates' yet."

Firing up Google, he typed combinations of words that might set them on the right path, fishing through links and descriptions without any success. Speeding through the internet wasn't fast enough, the click of a button too complex. There were answers but they danced at the edge of their reach, His fingers itched to smash something, anything, when the same roleplay site he'd seen seventeen times had popped up yet again. He angrily highlighted the latest search and smashed a white finger down on the backspace, growling low in his throat.

"Nine." Leon said, suddenly, startling Demyx out of his dreams of widespread computer massacre. "There are always nine plates. You should put that in." The musician looked at him incredulously. "Alright, but don't get your hopes up…" Typing quickly, Demyx leant back to dismally watch the loading bar slowly fill with green.

"Leon, I officially concede to your genius."

"It worked?" Leon leaned over to inspect the screen as Demyx bounced excitedly.

"I think…Yes! Here, '_Banchō Sarayashiki __is_ _a Japanese ghost story of love separated by social class, and broken trust and promises that ultimately lead to a dismal fate_.' Why didn't I check Wikipedia earlier? Lets see, plates…plates... _The story of Okiku is an old one, whose true origins are unknown; however, it first appeared under the title __Bancho Sarayashiki__ in July 1741 at a theater in Japan. Okiku is the beautiful servant of the samurai Aoyama Tessan, who has fallen madly in love with her and plots to kill his Uncle and cousin for power. The poor Okiku is in love with Aoyama's cousin, however, and refuses the samurai's amorous advances no matter how elaborate or decadent. Aoyama quickly forms a plan to force her into his bed; he steals a ceremonial plate from the collection of ten belonging to his uncle and has both girl and plates brought to his chambers. _

'_Telling Okiku one is missing, he attempts to seduce her while threatening to expose her as the thief, promising to protect her when he kills her lover and his Uncle and becomes Lord. Okiku knows he is lying, and so denies him yet again, holding onto her love for his cousin and swearing to reveal his plans of treason. Angry, Aoyama forces her to kneel on the floor and count the fragile plates. The girl counts aloud to nine until, finding only dust where the final plate should be, she shrieks._

'_The penalty for stealing any of the plates is death, and after his swift refusals Aoyama is keen to exact revenge on his powerless servant. Aoyama then has her suspended over a well and, erotically enjoying her torture, has her lowered into the water several times -beating her himself with a wooden sword when she is raised. He demands that she become his lover. She refuses again, and Aoyama slashes her with his sword, sending her body into the well._

'_As he is wiping the blood from his blade, the sound of Okiku counting her plates rises from the well. Realising this is the ghost of Okiku, the samurai turns to meet his fate. No play, poem or legend can ever agree on what happened to Aoyama after Okiku rose from the well's waters, neither can they conclude whether or not Okiku's spirit enacted its revenge and moved on to the afterlife.'_"

For moments there was only silence, broken by the chatter of the innocent crowd around them.

"That…would fit with the well Riku spoke about."

"And the broken crockery. And the water, and counting up to nine. But what about Sora? And why is She haunting _Riku_, of all people? She should be haunting this Aoyama guy, unless he's a relation of yours or whatever…But then, she's not haunting you…"

"Dem, slow down. You're sounding plausible. Riku and I have different mothers, remember. It could be on his mother's side, if any."

"Like I said, _genius_!"

"_Slow down._ Read on, I don't want anything happening to this stuff before we can read it."

"Don't worry guys, our computers are totally secure! No way you're losing that page in this internet café, not on my watch, nu-uh!" Leon's head turned so fast his neck clicked. Before him stood a short girl with a black bob, a lot of energy and a nametag that read 'Yuffie'.

"Whatever." He responded, turning back to the screen.

"Sorry," Demyx interjected, trying to avoid one of the scenes Leon so regularly caused with his aloofness. "He gets cranky when he uses computers. We know this place has a great connection, _don't we_ Leon?"

"Whatever." Her smile remained unfased.

"No worries! But if you're really worried you can save the page, if you really want." She grinned at them, somehow still feeling up to friendly banter. "Here." She leaned over Leon making him frown, and went through some complicated motions before pulling back. "You can access your own personal customer account whenever you come, and we'll save it for you! What's so important anyway? Ooooh, the old well huh? Yeah, we had a girl in here a few weeks ago looking up the weird bugs there for her report. You guys at the same school?"

"Wait, just a minute Miss," Leon began, suddenly speaking like honey and milk. "What well?" Yuffie, beaming at getting a friendly reaction at last, puffed up and delivered her report with pride.

"Well, she said there was a well in the village over in Tinybridge that had a bug infestation they hadn't seen in years, and that she was gonna use it for her Biology essay. Look, it says about the bugs right here, '_In 1795, old wells in Japan suffered from an infestation of a type of worm that became known as the "Okiku Bug". This worm, covered with thin threads making it look as though it had been bound, was widely believed to be a reincarnation of Okiku.'_ Apparently they've been moving round the country without any mating patterns or something…She was going on about environmentalists being all excited and blah blah blah…I don't really get that stuff…" But Demyx and Leon had stopped listening. They had managed a semblance of a smile to each other and started packing up, quickly popping their fee into Yuffie's gesturing hand.

"You've been very useful to us Miss. Thank you." Leon told her, his formality not quite hiding his new-found determination.

"Yeah, we'll be back if we need your wisdom again!"

"Totally! There's more where that came from, I'm just a fountain o' knowledge. Make sure you come here again, okay?" And they were gone, bell on the door jingling at their leaving. "Man, they forgot to log off…"

X

It was an accident that Riku even saw it really. A spindly, stupidly fragile thread that was the edge of another mirror, hanging to his right. Lifting a hand, he touched it and found it solid enough. It was just the picture, so translucent, lucid enough for him to see the mist and the darkness clear through it.

But he was sure that it was Sora. His light shone down the rabbit hole like a beacon.

X

"We've got a lead." Several heads turned at Demyx's loud profession in the silent library, disapproval clear on their faces. Cloud's head snapped up in much the same way Leon's had, the same click resonating through his bones, but Kairi was already on her feet.

"Thank God, three hours and there's nothing here. Not even a bite. What have you got?"

"A well not far from here, and the ghost's history. Seems she's jumping from well to well, and infesting them with worms as she goes." Leon summarized, starting to lead the girl towards the exit, eager to leave.

"Where's Sora?" Demyx bounced.

"Car." Cloud's voice floated from the doorway, already ahead of them. He wanted to get back to Sora and check he was alright. He'd been day-dreamy in the car, and Cloud had thought when he'd left him behind that he'd follow them in after a few minutes. He hadn't though, not even after hours, and though Cloud was getting anxious he hadn't gone to find his brother, knowing he'd liked to be alone sometimes himself at that age. With the return of the others though, he had an excuse to check up on the youngest Strife, and he was taking it.

When Cloud reached the car, Sora was exactly as they'd left him. He sat with one hand to the car window and eyes fixed on the glass.

"Sora, we've got a lead." Cloud delivered, promptingly. Instead of demanding to know about it, or looking even remotely interested, Sora continued to stare out of the window. "We're…going to go and follow it up now, okay?"

"'Kay." His voice was quiet, and his intense stare didn't waver even once.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine."

"Honestly?" Sora didn't answer him, choosing instead to ignore him completely. "What's wrong with him?" Cloud turned suddenly to Leon, eyes burning and gaze leveled on him.

"I don't know."

"Damnit Leonhart!"

"I'm okay, just drive." Sora ordered quietly from his seat, voice floating through the gaping car door to settle on Cloud's shoulders like deadweight. Kairi touched his arm and his scowl lessened to a frown.

"We should listen; I'll keep an eye on him. Let's get to this lead before anything else goes wrong." She urged calmingly. Pushing Cloud towards the other door, Kairi pulled herself into the seat behind Sora, leaning forward in her belt to hook her arms round him.

"You really okay, So?" She asked him quietly.

"Yeah. Concentrating." Relieved, she smiled and let him go. Sora came to her with his worst problems, and it was, after all, her that taught him to block out everything around him and meditate, concentrating on the answer to solve them.

The engine rumbled to life.

Beside him, hands tightly gripping the wheel, Cloud shot glances at Sora every few minutes. Sora wanted to smile at him and smooth the kink out of his brow, but the link was still there, calling him, and he knew he couldn't let it go.

'_Sora…?'_

Sora started in his seat, eyes widening at the glass.

'_Sora?'_ Taking a steadying breath, Sora probed outwards with his mind.

'_Y-yeah?'_

'_Thank God you're there.'_

'_You're…Riku?'_

'_Yeah.'_ Thank God certainly were the words. Relief flooded Sora and a silly grin came to his face despite himself, just happy knowing Riku was still there. Still alive.

'_Where were you? I've been here the past two hours.'_

'_I was chasing you. The link was weak.'_

'_Oh.' _Sora thought about leaving the mirror at the church, and the movements of the rust-bucket car. _'Sorry. The car window makes a better window than a mirror.'_

'_Heh, who'd have thought.'_

'_Shut up. Oh yeah, we've found a well that could be linked to Okiku. We're heading there now.' _There was no answer. Sora's heart sped up and he placed a worried hand on the window, anxiously searching the glass.

"Riku?" Kairi and Cloud both looked at him, startled by his sudden outburst.

"Did you see something Sora?" Kairi asked.

"Riku!" Fisting his hand, Sora began to pound on the window. Cloud swerved on the road, barely missing the 'Tinybridge Bridge' road sign and clipping the edge of the bridge's first girder.

"Stop it Sora! You'll hurt yourself." Grabbing Sora's hand, he felt Kairi lean forward before she was pulled back by her seatbelt. Both of the back doors opened with simultaneous bangs, and Kairi screamed.

"Kairi! Cloud, stop the car-"

"I can't…the brakes, they…" The air con came on, dousing them all with frigid air as Kairi's seat belt undid itself.

"_There was a reason I never said her name, Sora."_

"_Two…"_

Something grabbed the wheel from Cloud's hands and the backend of the car swung round, flinging Kairi out before she had chance to grab hold of anything. Sora turned with a cry to watch her roll, undignified onto a grassy verge. She sat up to call after the disappearing car, seemingly unhurt, before falling out of view.

The car wasn't going straight anymore, even as Cloud pulled with all his strength to turn the wheel and straighten it out. It had turned and was about to plunge into the oncoming traffic on the other side of the road.

A weight on his legs wrenched Cloud's gaze from the terrifying sight before him. In the dark space below the steering wheel a figure was grotesquely contorted, wide eyes staring through him and mouth hanging open. It was a woman, her arms –much too long- wound up around his legs, resting on his inner thighs and stopping any hope he had of touching the break. Her shoulder pressed down on the accelerator and Medusa's hair curled upwards to tie the wheel in place.

Revulsion filled him, and with a cry Cloud began to kick at her.

Sora tried to turn and help his brother, but found his hands and legs bound to the stained seat by the dark hair in his drain.

"Cloud!"

Miraculously the cars swerved round them, each one avoiding them or only just catching a wing mirror or door. A final slam from a four-by-four forced the back doors closed and set them on a deadly course for the side of the bridge.

"Hold on!" Cloud ordered even as the screaming face below him was covered by hair that crept up his legs. Sora couldn't have let go if he'd wanted to, hands clawing into the seat in fear and legs pinned by hair.

The radio gurgled as the engine crumpled into the railings of the bridge.

Behind them, Leon had watched warily when Cloud's car had begin to swerve. When he'd seen the doors spring and a figure fly out he'd swerved to pull over and found Kairi on the grass, crying as she tried to climb the slippery slope after the car that had dropped her.

"What happened?" Leon demanded.

"I don't know, but we have to help them!" When they finally got to the top of the hill, Cloud's car was being battered around by other cars, the whole bridge in chaos. People had stopped and stood outside their vehicles watching the maelstrom of steel and rubber.

Pulling Kairi up, he rushed her and Demyx towards the nearest still car and preyed that Cloud would hit the break and stop the madness. No-one was moving, there was nothing left to hit them, so if they just stopped they'd be okay. _Stop, and be okay…_

But they didn't stop, and the little car carried on across the wide bridge towards the edge and the chasmic drop below. It hit the railing with a sickening shriek of metal and splintering wood, and then seemed to cling to the edge for a moment. But as Leon's heart did another slow beat it carried on forward, back tires spinning full throttle, propelling it over the edge.

It took him a moment to realise to hoarse screams that rang loudest in his ears were his, and he released Kairi to run to the edge, shoes crunching on broken glass. Over the ravaged edge was only deep blue, a small smear of white froth on its surface where the car had already sunk in an explosion of bubbles and churning water. He waited, through the screams and the howls. Through the wails of the ambulance that weaved its way minutes later through the stationary traffic.

He knew he shouldn't have involved Cloud in this. He knew he should have sent Kairi home, like he had with Namine. He knew, he knew, there was nothing to be done for Sora or Riku…

…other than get dragged down with them.

X

It's silent underwater. The only noise the blood rushing in your ears. Cloud was wrapped part around him as they hit, blonde hair brushing his face a bright contrast to the black that bound his hands.

The windscreen cracked and the world turned blue. The body underneath the wheel was mangled as the hood was crushed inwards by the weight of the water. When the water began to rise, it rose red, though from Her or Cloud's legs neither could tell. It's silent underwater.

"_There's a reason I never said Her name."_

----

TBC

AN: Okay, I caved and wrote a scene I was saving. But I can't lug dear ol' Riku out of some glass again so soon, and Cloud needed to get his head out of his overly-pragmatic arse somehow. xD Please leave a note with your thoughts!

Was it boring in places? Has it been slow? I get the impression it's been slow. I'm not usually worried about this in my fics, but this one has me paranoid, so if you think so please say…I'm not entirely sure how to go at a steady pace, relate the plot, develop relationships and keep some tension without going at a snail's pace DX . Practice makes perfect I guess. So, if you feel like listing the scenes that were slow to you, that would be really helpful. Love ya'.

Oh, and it DID snow. Lots and lots. It's snowing now, but I'm sick of being cold so I'm in here writing and just watching it instead, after my wonderful mother decided it would be fun to spontaneously go out without coats and take some quick photos. Mm, wet indoors clothes. Good stuff.

FINALLY, and holy shit this is a long note;

PLEASE REMEMBER TO TURN OFF YOUR LIGHTS AT 8:30pm TILL 9:30 FOR EARTH HOUR TODAY. Let's save the planet, people. xD (Saturday)


	8. And She's Coming After You

A/N: Thank you Top Gear for your useless (or not, in this case) and seemingly pointless experiments! I now know how to escape a sinking car. Written to Orchard of Mines by Globus, which is a very good song. XD THANK YOU FOR THE AMAZING AMOUNT OF REVIEWS! I love you all, and I wipe away a little tear in my eye…

Thanks to becoafamu, CloudyMorning, darknecromancer666, 1-Love-Me-Deadly-2, Pandas Forever Yeah, High Elf, iShiznitch, XxXmaximuM-RideRXxX, sad kuroneko, Chronos Mephistopheles, Midnight Hell, ChrisCa (your e-mail didn't show up, so I couldn't reply. Sorry. :[ Thank you very much for reviewing, though), Yunie Tatlin, OceanFae, Ninny-na, Dust to Dusk and PhinMaginONLY. Special thanks goes to NightmareFairy for her long and insightful reviews that make my ego grow fatter. Love ya'(V).

Disclaimer: I own naddaa. Head butting belongs to Pat Barker. Extra thanks to Mare! UNBETA-ED, UNCHECKED, AND TERRIBLY LATE.

ALSO comes from every group's perspective in turn, so prepare to be thrown around a bit. I did it to increase tension but I'm not sure it worked and I'm too lazy to rewrite it XD Plus I got bored writing some scenes and literally just jumped to another one…sorry about that.

----

_Sora and Cloud have just plunged out of oncoming traffic, off the side of a bridge and into a river. Leon, Demyx and Kairi can only watch in horror as the car hits the surface of the water, and quickly vanishes from sight…_

**Remains**

Chapter 8 – And She's Coming After You

They sank faster than the car filled up, but not by much.

Cloud's airbag exploded outward, knocking him back into his chair and giving him a bloody nose. Beside him Sora cried out in dismay to find his seat belt refusing to unfasten. Water gushed in through all the car's tiny holes, and Cloud struggled past the air bag and growing pain to work furiously at the boy's belt. His own had snapped open well enough, but Sora's was stuck and the water was already at waist level, obscuring his view.

"There isn't enough time. Keep trying the belt, but hold on. I'm going to have to open the window!" Cloud ordered, forcing himself to stay as calm as he could while adrenalin took a joy-ride through his veins. Sora's frantic eyes flicked from him to the belt, and his clumsy fingers began to prod and tug at the abused mechanism.

Thanking the stars his car was old enough to have wind-down windows, Cloud took hold of the handle and began to crank it.

Immediately water gushed in, freezing cold and buffeting like a barrage of rocks. It was all Cloud could do to take a final breath and carry on winding, until the weight of the water's onslaught ripped it from his grasp and began to drag him out of his seat towards the back of the car. The pain in his leg intensified as the trapped limb was slowly wrenched a few agonising inches from its prison. Not good, not good…if he came free and couldn't reach the front of the car again they'd both be trapped and there wasn't enough time, damnit!

A warm hand grabbed his arm, and with effort he saw his little brother pulling him back against the ebbing flow.

The car was full. Sora had wasted valuable time saving him. His lungs _burned_.

The rush of water had slowed to a muted current, but the last of the air bubbles were escaping through the open window in Cloud's desperate effort to get the water pressure to even out. Sora's eyes were wider than he'd ever seen them, even despite the sting of being underwater. The belt still held him in place like a black, nylon serpent and outside the windows the world was turning from blue to black.

Gripping the steering wheel, he braced himself hastily and tried the door. The handle clicked, but when he pushed it was as effective as pushing a brick wall. He tried again, shoving against it with all his strength, but it still wouldn't move.

The light of the suddenly surface seemed so far away.

X

Demyx was off before anyone could form a plan. He sprinted towards the nearest exit from the bridge and skidded down the dirt slope next to it, stopping himself at the bank of the gaping river. Pulling off his shoes and jacket, he dived into the swell without looking back.

With strong strokes he propelled himself through the endless deep towards the spot under the broken area of bridge. Taking a deep breath, he plunged downwards and looked around franticly for any signs of life. There were none.

Around him were only ripped bits of weed and misty blue. The surface was shining and the sun had finally managed to come out, burning even through the water to sear his retinas when he looked up. When he looked down again, spots danced in front of his vision in purple and gold. He blinked. No, not sun spots, headlights! But too far down to swim on the breath he had, and still sinking. They'd never get the doors open while the car was still falling, and god only knew how deep the river really was…too deep to see the riverbed at any rate.

Kicking upwards, Demyx ripped the surface open in a sparkling shower of droplets. Leon was shouting anxiously from the shore, waving at him, but he couldn't hear what the brunette was saying because of the water rushing in his ears. Kairi slid down behind him in a cloud of dust, hands gripping the hem of her skirt.

"Here!" He yelled back. "I see the headlamps!" Leon stopped waving with a frown, and the last Demyx saw of them before diving in was him discarding his beloved leather jacket and taking to the water himself.

X

Alone, for once. Riku was no longer being tormented by his appointed spectre, but was instead tormenting himself. His fingers were bloodied and slipping on the shining glass window as he scratched and pounded on it, driven by the screams and the shrieks of wailing metal that were his only indication of what had happened to Sora and Kairi on the other side. Beyond the window was as dark as the watery world around him, but it was still there. If it hadn't disappeared, there was still the chance he could go through it. Please, God, let him get through it.

She wasn't there with him, and it made him feel sick. She could be anywhere else, anywhere at all, but his rolling gut told him She was with Sora.

The skin over his knuckles was bleeding, but still he punched, throwing his whole weight behind it. He took it by the corners and wrenched, but his ministrations hardly even made a noise against the unbreakable glass.

"Damn, damn, _fuck…"_ He groaned, arms tensing with pent-up frustration and fear. Without warning, the glittering square toppled backwards into the water like a culled tree. Riku groped after it, heart missing a beat at the chance he had of losing his one link to Sora. But it didn't break on the stream's little bed, instead it lay there, and began to suck the water in.

The current tugged him towards his window, going against its usual direction. One foot on the square and he was falling, falling into wonderland.

X

Sora was finding it hard not to breathe in water, hard to resist that final, fatal blue breath. He knew the moment he took water into his lungs his life was gone.

But the belt was still wrapped around him and Cloud still couldn't open the door. The blond was winding down the rest of the window frantically and trying to pull himself out from the car's ruined driving seat. His leg finally came loose with a sickening blossoming of blood, but he didn't seem to feel it. Instead of tending to it, the moment he was free Cloud went to move in front of him to free his brother.

Sora began to twist himself out of his belt without unbuckling it, but it was hard as the nylon didn't feed out well in the water around them. His muscles were aching so badly, the lactic acid in them screaming for want of more oxygen. Lilac eyelids were drooping and he had to fight to keep the darkness from creeping over his vision. Fingers suddenly too big to use refused to grip the belt.

An explosion of bubbles and Cloud was shoved backwards, half out of the open window. A further crack and the airbag was free, letting loose a belch of air and catching the struggling blond under the ribs, pushing Cloud completely out of the car and whisking him away into the blue. All that was left of his brother was a trail of red. Sora reached weakly after him, mind screaming and defiant but body unable to react at all. The air pockets caught on the roof were achingly close.

But too far to reach.

A sudden thump and he was surrounded by green jellied weeds, rising up around him as though he was already pushing up daisies. They took the car into their embrace and found their way into hub-caps and radiators, accepting the vehicle into the floor of the river.

Total silence, with his vision going blank.

Then a gentle touch on his face. A flash of silver. Pressure on his lips and blessed air filtering into his lungs. The stagnant air from above the surface fled him, rising up, only to be replenished when that kiss touched his lips again and let him breathe in life.

X

Cloud was only halfway to the surface when he finally got free of the air bag. He began to swim back down, painfully slowly, weakly despite the adrenalin still circulating. He had to get back to Sora. The boy was still in the car, facing death all alone. Alone.

But an arm was round his waist and he was rising again. He had no strength to fight against his saviour, although he tried, struggling and pulling until they finally broke the surface and he was dragged to shore.

Leon laid the blond on the ground in front of Kairi, who was breathing so erratically he thought she might hyperventilate at any second. Coughing pervaded the air, Cloud's lungs finding it hard to return to their normal function after so much liquid, and Leon tried to help him as he struggled to push himself up. Water bled across the ground as it dripped off their clothes.

"S-Sora-"

"It's okay," Leon soothed. "Demyx will get him. Stay still."

"Doesn't know where he is…There's no time…!" Coughs once again robbed Cloud of speech and Leon rubbed his back. Looking away from the blond and across the river he saw a wilted mullet emerge from the waves. Demyx shook his head sadly. Pulling away, Cloud tried to drag himself back to the swell against the grip of the brunet.

"You're not going back in there Strife!"

"_You would!_" Silence followed Cloud's thickly-voiced accusation, both men knowing he was right. Leon didn't relinquish the blond's arm, however. He knew that letting Cloud go meant handing him over to death.

"I'm not going to be responsible for another tragedy." Leon told him quietly. "Let Demyx find him. He'll get there quicker than you in the state you're in." Cloud felt a small hand on his shoulder; Kairi. It was shaking but the grip was strong.

"Cloud…" Was all she managed before she broke into tears, falling down to hug him tightly. The knuckles of Cloud's hands were white, and Leon watched almost palpable thoughts chase each other across his blue eyes.

"I can't sit and do _nothing_." Movement across the river caught Leon's eye.

"Then maybe you can help them do something instead." Machinery and police cars lined the other river bank, and behind them paramedics slid down the abused ridge; they had come quickly, but only time could tell if it was quick enough.

X

When Riku touched his lips to those of the fading boy before him, an almost painful bolt of life shot through his body, searing his lips and welding his hand to the back of Sora's neck. He breathed into the collapsing lungs through the pain, repeating a mantra of _'I won't lose him'_ and _'I won't lose to Her'_.

The water of the real world couldn't even touch him. He didn't feel the windscreen of the car, despite the fact his waist appeared to go clean through it, and he didn't notice the gear stick that passed right through his kidney. All he could feel was fiery skin under his fingertips and white-hot lips against his own.

Sora's chest heaved as the oxygen revived his gelling blood.

Blue eyes opened to aqua green.

Riku was almost glad that the water rendered them unable to discuss their compromising position. He pulled away from the brunet, heartbeat thundering from more than just fear, and tried to pull off the belt. His fingers couldn't touch it, still not tangible enough for him to grip.

Sora had begun to panic the moment the ghostly boy had moved away, and when Riku felt a crushing grip on his forearm he immediately pressed him mouth to Sora's again for further transfusion of air. The second time he pulled away he held the sides of Sora's face in each hand, trying to will calm into the boy, and then motioned for him to work on the belt himself.

Sora nodded shakily, partly from the revived fear of death that soared through him and the rest from the small smile of reassurance that came from the ethereal boy holding him. Reminding himself not to breathe, he pulled the belt over his head and began to work his legs from under the rest. With the panic dampened, it didn't seem too impossible to escape the feeble clutches of his seatbelt. And then Riku's cold hand caught Sora's warm one, and the window was open and the river was wide and free.

X

Police officers and paramedics swarmed Cloud, who had been forced into the back of an ambulance with a blanket over his shoulders and too many questions hovering around his head like gnats. Was he dizzy? Could he breathe? Where did he come from, Son? Who else was in the car? Any nausea? Cloud? Cloud?

Between the dark bodies around him Cloud peered anxiously at the crane and the divers that were working on lifting his now crushed car from the depths. He just wanted one glimpse of soggy brown hair, one quick flash of a sheepish grin. Then he would answer their questions and accept their disbelief as Leon had accepted his.

He could hear Kairi's mobile ringing again. Roxas, calling for the fifteenth time without getting any answers while the redhead told the police everything they could wring out of her. That meant the blond was at home pacing. That meant he could feel Sora suffering.

Cloud's fears only heightened at each shrill ring.

Then up popped a diver's head, signalling to the crane operator to start lifting. Cloud sprang onto his feet and barrelled through the people around him like skittles, ignoring Leon's cries and the shouts of the paramedics. The silver chord kept feeding out from the waves, endlessly winding until finally the contorted bonnet of the car came into view. Water cascaded from the bent framework and Cloud strained his eyes for any sign of Sora's form inside the passenger seat. Hands caught him from behind.

"You shouldn't see this Son, please come sit back-"

"No!" And he tore from the grasp down to the very edge of the bank, blanket flying from his shoulders like an abandoned plastic bag on the breeze. The car was too high up to see inside. He sprinted down the bank alongside it as they pulled the battered vehicle in. When it finally thumped onto the soggy ground, there was nothing visible inside.

A police officer stepped forward, opening the door with a grim expression. Residue water spilled out onto the grass, but the body they expected to follow was absent, and the constables were left scratching their heads. Cloud fell to his knees.

"Cloud!" He heard far behind him. Leon, or Kairi maybe. The mud squelched between his clenching fingers. "Cloud. Damnit, damnit." Leon then. Hands on his arms. Eyes on his face. Brother lost to the contortionist under his steering wheel.

His muddied hands came up to clutch Leon's biceps, leaving brown, sludgy handprints on his skin.

"I did nothing." He whispered hoarsely. "Sora was dying, and all I could do was…was, _nothing_." Leon didn't reply. There was nothing he could say. And then the hands on his arms were vice-like in their grip, and Cloud was head butting him in the chest; too much self-hatred within himself to embrace the older man in grief but needing contact, any contact, to try and stop the pain that welled in his chest.  
Leon didn't try to stop the blond, despite the dull ache that was forming over his breastbone. Instead he tried to communicate his sympathy through the chaste grip he had on Cloud's arms, occasionally allowing himself to rub circles onto pale skin with the pads of his thumbs. They stayed that way for a longer time than either would ever admit, but Leon waited until Cloud tired himself out and hung his head, refusing to meet eyes or faces or even the sky. One dry sob escaped him, but no tears and no noises. Just a quick hitch of the shoulders and an inhalation of breath. A shudder of platinum strands.

Leon could hear Kairi in tears on the phone somewhere behind them. He could pick out the muffled whimpers and high-pitched panic still lacing her voice as she finally began explaining to Roxas. The phone was crackling with the sheer volume of Roxas' panicked replies and questions, the speaker buzzing, the little blond's voice thick with tears.

And Leon hated himself for being dulled to it all, having been through the whole thing before.

X

It was the subtle quickening of the river's current that roused Riku's suspicions. He hadn't gone through to Sora's world completely, like he had hoped. Instead he'd managed to form a tenuous link with Sora as his safety rope. He couldn't see the water he was leading the brunet through, rather he walked the cold ground of his now familiar ghostly realm as the other paddled.

Irony laughed at them as Sora floated behind him, a translucent, glowing spectre of a boy, anchored only by Riku's freezing fingers to the ground. From Riku's point of view, it looked almost as though he were the living leading lost dead Sora to the light, instead of the other way around.

Around him all he could see was black, as he seemed to most days. He didn't see the divers that were making their way to the wreckage, and he could only guess at where the edge of the river was, but he could certainly feel the pull of the eerie little brook of the dead. And that flow had changed.

A pressure made itself known on his fingers, and he turned to once again breathe air he himself did not need into the mouth of the living teen before him. The stream was starting to get violent; white froth spraying as it smashed on little pebbles and swirled angrily around his shoes.

Suddenly it was bunching at his feet and was no longer a froth, but instead a knot of inky black.

"_One…"_

"Run!" Riku ordered, starting to sprint. He almost ripped his own hand from Sora's grip before he realised that the river-bound brunet wouldn't be able to run underwater. Instead he just pulled, hoping that they were moving fast enough.

X

Cloud didn't look up from the ground until the screams started. Following Leon's stricken gaze, he found himself looking once again at his demolished car.

The doors had shut themselves and the window rolled itself back up, but then the glass exploded outwards in a deadly sharded rain. Dark, matted hair rolled out of the weave of the seats like sweat, and several people found themselves thrown backwards onto the soggy ground as further hair shot, rope-like, from the choppy waters of the river. Each rope coiled around the newly exposed metal, and with an inhuman shriek that came from both everywhere and nowhere, it began to drag the little car back to its watery grave.

People were running as it sank once more in a churning froth of white horses. A few detectives tried to keep their men in position but panic had caught them in its grip, and they slipped and slid across the muddy ground. Another shriek shook the world around them before Leon was hauling him up again, pulling Cloud's dead weight away from the slowly receding vehicle. He was shocked when Cloud stood up straight and turned sharply. The blond was almost snarling as he looked back to the wreckage.

"What are you so angry about?" He screamed back at the roiling mass. It seemed to calm, considering the angry acid spat by the young man who'd escaped its grip. "You got what you fucking wanted! Right?" The calm was replaced with sudden movement, a petulant lashing out in phantom fury. Hair cracked like whips on the grass, before flying at Leon and Cloud and thrashing round them in a storm of strands.

They threw up their arms to shield their eyes, but couldn't stop the tiny cuts that appeared on every inch of exposed skin. Arms were nothing when faced against a maelstrom that abused their eardrums to the point of breaking.

Then as quickly as it came it was gone, and the sounds of life seemed fat in their ears.

Cloud's frustrated grief only grew. Why didn't She come out? Why didn't She come and stand in front of him so he could _fight_ Her like he'd fought bullies and parents and every threat that had come before?

Instead he was left clutching black strands that slipped from his fingers, without closure and without answers. Without Sora.

Well fuck that.

"I'm going to the well." He announced decisively, and Leon was left to stumble after him in confusion. Cloud focussed and clenched his teeth. Strifes didn't give up, and they didn't cry; they worked and fought for what they wanted until they had it. With this in mind, he changed all his grief to hot hatred and stormed towards the bridge. "And I'm getting him back."

X

"_Two…"_ Riku was almost bowled over when Sora shot past him, having caught an undercurrent that pulled him at speed. It was all Riku could do to grasp desperately at the hand he was holding. Together they sped blind, colours whirling past in a diluted blue-tinged parade, and it was sheer luck that Riku tried to pull Sora back when he did. Even though it didn't stop their mad rush through the water, it changed their course enough that Sora avoiding having his body smashed against the upcoming rocks.

Sora realised they must have been pulled from the original river down a tributary, a rocky tributary, and with difficulty began to manoeuvre himself around the rocks that loomed out from the froth and foam. He hadn't heard any more ghostly numbers called, but he still paddled with the water's rapid current to get as far from Her voice as he could.

Finally he hit something, hard. It seemed too large to go round, and so, with his free hand, Sora sank his fingertips into it and began to pull himself up and out of the choppy waters.

Riku watched from his dark world as Sora's glowing form struggled to return to land. It was like darkness was taking bites out of the boy, a chunk at a time, as his image disappeared once he left the water. Riku was going to be alone again. He didn't want to be alone, he hated being alone. But he couldn't ask Sora to stay. _Rabbits don't swim._

He swallowed the lump in his throat and hooked his hands beneath one of Sora's feet, propping him up and propelling him out. No ceremony, no goodbye, not even a thought. Just up, out, and suddenly there was no light in Riku's world anymore. He couldn't think about it, if he thought about it, he thought he might _die._

"Riku?" A muffled voice.

Then a golden arm was groping through the water once more, fingers outstretched in invitation.

"Riku, come on!" And he took the shining digits in his own, and felt a breeze caress his sodden skin as it rose once again into the world of the living.

X

Sora had plunged his shaking hand back into the current as soon as he realised Riku wasn't crawling out with him, and he couldn't help the stupid skip that came in his heartbeat at the thought he might have left the other boy behind. The moment his fingers curled around a cold limb he wrenched, further abusing muscles that had become lax with exhaustion and the after-effects of fear.

When the surface was broken by the silvery-white of sun-deprived hair, Sora allowed the tense muscles in his back to relax.

Riku's free arm was grasping at rock and coarse grass to pull himself over the rocks and onto the riverbank, blindly aiming for somewhere dry. Out of nowhere arms wound themselves around him and a thundering heartbeat was aligned with his own. For a moment he could only revel in the blissful warmth of the living, but then he managed to reawaken his arms and lift them to rest around the curve of Sora's hips. It was a long while before either moved, and when Sora spoke it was with an ironically dry voice.

"Thank you." Riku only smiled and pulled him closer, despite the ache that was forming in the wake of adrenalin and fear.

Neither could pin-point the moment the embrace became awkward, or when the tension suddenly rose up around them. All Riku knew was that something in the air was telling him something had to happen, now, in this moment. Pressure was building and the world held its breath. All events had come together to form _this._

Faint spray speckled his arms from the raging water flowing past them, marking the passage of time, and with a grace so perfectly timed Sora lifted his arms and loosened the dark strip of cloth around Riku's eyes.

It fell and slipped, tumbling over Riku's shoulders and sliding down his shirt, propelled by Sora as he pulled Riku forward and let the cloth fall from his fingers. It was trapped between them as Riku tightened his hold around Sora's waist, moulding them together. It swayed desolately when he trembled at the sensation of Sora's breath ghosting over his lips.

"Riku?" The slither of black finally fell to the ground as he jolted violently, Sora's shoe slipping in the mud and forcing him to grip Riku's shoulders to stop himself from sliding back into the water. The grass swallowed the cloth up, but neither of them noticed. "Is that…is it truly you?"

Above them was a face they both recognised. Blue eyes framed by fine blonde hair and a distinctive white dress, with one too-big coat hung haphazardly over slender shoulders.

"N-Namine…" Suddenly she was skidding down the bank, feet tearing through brittle vines and weeds to stop by throwing herself onto the silver-haired boy. Sora found himself with an armful of stranger and tried to untangle himself as she crushed the breath out of Riku beside him. He watched as Riku regained his bearings and scooped her into a loose hug, and then noticed how fragile she was. Each arm looked as if it could crack off, like a Greek statue in life, and the bags under her eyes weren't quite hidden enough by her porcelain complexion.

"Oh Riku, Riku thank goodness you're here! There's so much to tell you, so much I want to ask. Why are you here? How did you escape?" Riku simply tried to stop her spilling out of his arms, gathering her up and trying to summarise saving a boy after he'd plummeted from a bridge in a way that would invite the least amount of questions.

"Sora's, uh, car…it…wait, escape what?" Namine blinked at him and then shook her head.

"A woman in a white kimono, with long black hair and wide doe-eyes. The woman that's been stalking me for the past nine weeks; how did you escape _Her_?"

Riku's mouth hung open, and Sora wondered at seeing surprise on the silver-haired boy's face for once, instead of his own.

----

AN: So then, sorry about the repetitive adjectives and scenery. And for the random quickness. And general crap-assery of this chapter XD However, if you want to take a peek, I've managed to cook up a couple of pieces of art for it, despite its utter failing. If you want to check them out, check my profile. Thanks for reading, and thanks for such an amazing response last chapter! I love you guys, I really do.

Sorry for the long time it took to update exams and then Expo and then I got slurped up by the Bleach fandom. It's let go of me before, I'm sure it will again. I'll be back soon!


End file.
